Drive On

Drive on

Of course few of us actually enjoy being ill. It's not very nice after all and it always seems to come at the wrong time. This being accepted, I still feel illness has had a "bad-press" recently, in fact no one has had a good word to say about it. Just open a newspaper and chances are you'll learn that some dedicated scientist is just one step away from banishing this or that fiendish disease from the face of the earth. The article will invariably be written in an overtly optimistic or chauvinistic style portraying mans imminent triumph over the chaotic forces of nature. But is nature so chaotic? And do men really know as much as they think about disease?

My own view

though please don't quote me when I'm suffering, is that illness serves an essential function in the personal evolution of all human beings. Far from being random or chaotic, it occurs in highly predictable ways, whenever we are psychologically out of balance and are therefore putting stress upon our own healing system.

Like the flashing lights on a car dashboard, symptoms should be regarded as warning signs, designed to gain our attention.

Of course this is quite a radical view, and contra to everything that modern medicine has taught us. Conventionally we are encouraged to abdicate all responsibility for our condition and hand ourselves over to "the experts"; to do as they will with our body, as if we had no part to play in the equation. Worse still they will usually supply us with a large hammer, in the shape of powerful drugs, and when we have smashed out the entire dashboard, tell us to drive on.