A dear friend once told me that good health is everything. I can’t blame her for thinking that. For six years, she watched as Alzheimer’s disease claimed her sweet mother’s mind and body. I, too, watched as Alzheimer’s decimated my father. Without memory, personality, or thought, the person who was my father died long before his heart stopped beating.
But I don’t accept the premise that good health is everything. I have friends who prove that life can be enriching and worthwhile in the face of deteriorating health.
One friend can’t work because of an on-the-job injury that causes constant pain and prevents him from staying in one position for more than a few minutes at a time. Without a job or the physical ability to perform any sustained activity, he has focused on making his life worthwhile. “My goal is to do something to help at least one person every day,” he says. And he does. He drives people to appointments, bakes goodies for friends, and performs many small acts of kindness for others.
We would all like to be healthy, to have bodies and minds that function as they should. That is not the case with those of us who live with chronic pain. But that does not mean we can’t lead fulfilling and purposeful lives.
In his series “Healing and the Mind,” Bill Moyers interviewed a remarkable woman, Rachel Naomi Remen. A medical doctor, Remen founded a retreat to help people cope with cancer. She herself has Crohn’s disease, a debilitating, chronic illness. Though she is not physically healthy, Remen says she’s whole, an even more important state of being.
“Health,” she notes, “is not a goal, it’s a means to doing what is purposeful or meaningful in life.” And while she acknowledges that being healthy often makes it easier to accomplish things, “you can do [meaningful things] anyway, even when you’re not physically healthy.”
Chronic pain may interfere with jobs, recreation, and even relationships, but it doesn’t have to stop us from living a good life. My friend who helps others has learned that lesson. And because of the effort, his acts are often more meaningful than they would have been otherwise. He brings joy to others—and to himself. So might we all.