I often say, the ripple of the 60’s just about killed me, so I’m glad I’m only an indirect product of that era. As a high school freshman back in the late 70’s, I remember fear-based tactical health and sex ed where we were taught the end was nigh if we used or abused our democratic freedom of choice with regard to “drugs, sex, and rock and roll.” Not that anyone should heed those warnings lightly, but I just wasn’t really listening in spite of the fear mongering. I had other things on my mind and “needed” to do it “my way.” Navigating the minefields and torrential waters of adolescence while moving into adulthood consisted mainly of me serving the external masters of this world (or worse, the biological and physiological impulses of my mind-body oblivion). Now in the middle of my fifth decade, I am just now beginning to see how mastering the mind-body-spirit connection is absolutely key. It was not until I discovered radical leadership and transcendent living in the field of health and wellness, mental health and addiction that the true transformation of heart and soul would begin to lead me toward relationship and community.
I do remember vividly the highlight of hard sciences where we dissected frogs in biology in high school, but in reality, I must say the well-endowed girl in the yellow sweater who sat behind me caught more of my attention than how the body worked biologically, though maybe that was directly connected to the frogs and biological dissection, i.e. the birds and bees and the frogs. I was a teenage boy and anything was to be expected and very little connection or inspiration actually occurred, albeit, not entirely the fault of my teachers and elders. I also have images of PE class where we played dodgeball and tried to navigate locker room hazing as exercises in “movement.” In light of all that shame-based, external behavior modification centered around “health,” I’m ashamed to say that was pretty much the extent of my health literacy, let alone any viable application of anything remotely resembling wellness.
I went on to avoid the ominous warnings on pretty much everything and ventured into unhealthy, even harmful, almost deadly, choices involving the first of the big three, substances including alcohol. At the age of twenty seven (and still with great shame), I didn’t come out of that unscathed. The middle “sex warning” manifested by adults in authority appeared to be blasting at me through a megaphone. Concerns about pregnancy and disease were the primary admonitions in my high school years. Although these cautions were well meaning, and ignoring them could have been physically harmful, we should have been talking more about how random acts of sex were most likely more emotionally or spiritually damaging than anything else. And although I remember “bachelor living” as a senior where we learned to sew buttons and lightly season our steaks with butter instead of drenching them in A-1, I would have fared better if there was more in-depth talk about relationships in general, a concept and application thereof that still confounds me to this day (Perhaps we didn’t talk about how to do love and long term relationships because no one really knows the secret of that eternal mystery. Perhaps it can’t be taught through education alone but must be learned through trial and error or experience much like everything else.). And with regard to the last of the big three, I just eventually grew out of rock and roll, probably the least harmful of them all. I’ve moved on to blues, jazz, and bluegrass. At the risk of waxing nostalgic and minimizing the waning images or vision of the past, if the big three were the only concerns of youth today, everything would be all right with the world.
Even up until twenty years after I completed a 28 day inpatient “poly” substance abuse treatment stay at the old Deaconess Care Unit on the downtown campus in 1987, I was still eating a diet rich in red meat and high fat carbs. I was raised on meat and potatoes, and we always had a low nutritional iceberg lettuce salad with no protein with our supper, and bread, lots of bread and butter. Even though I had been “clean and sober” for going on two decades, I still liked my sugar and caffeine (daily diet fountain soda and dessert) and did little exercise. Not only were caffeine and sugar my new drugs of choice, but I was burning adrenaline at the rate of fatigue, enough to create anxiety and depression to require medication and an ultimate crash and burn with stress and health as little as five years ago. So this agonizingly, painfully slow learning and change process called healthy living takes radical measures when we’re trying to undo a lifetime of habits that are ingrained to the core, but overcoming them is doable though not by doing it alone.
In the last five years, I eliminated the anti-depressants and now take only supplements (aside from allergy medications that I have yet to find the root cause of or at least I have not made the hard choices to eliminate whatever is in my diet that may be contributing to environmental causes that I have less control over). I have also realized the value of cardio and low resistance functional (strength) training to supplement other methods of activity like yoga, meditation, and mindfulness. I still often “use” minimal amounts of caffeine in green tea and coffee and often succumb to my sweet tooth, but normally for “treats”. My regimen consists mostly of eating more fish, chicken, and turkey and if I have a salad today, it is usually as a meal and consists of spinach or dark greens with lots of whole, fresh fruits and/or vegetables complemented with lean protein. I also try to “walk the walk” more in my professional and personal endeavors by balancing the work-life aspects of community or small group support, rest and relaxation (not my strong suit), and community involvement where I serve someone besides myself. Relationships are 99.9 percent of life, and although, I still struggle with doing them well — friends, family, and romantic connections — I have found that intimacy, accountability, and support are absolutely critical to a healthy mind-body-spirit. I have worked in criminal justice and corrections, business and education, and most recently in community health and peer support.
I have seen that those of us who are working in the helping professions, whether it be education, social service, and especially the health field, are most susceptible to not taking care of ourselves, e.g. we play the martyr by working seven days a week, twelve hours a day, eating on the run, neglecting our relationships, not making time for exercise and renewal. We’re too busy to take care of ourselves and our loved ones because we are busy saving the world, by God! Even if we are doing a decent job of maintaining balance in health and wellness, it is all the more critical that we take care of ourselves while we, so we can, care for others (There is an unforgivable irony and a painful paradox in receiving “care” from a resentful, angry, or hateful (unhealthy) caregiver.). Although there is nothing worse than a hypocrite when it comes to those serving others, we must also remember that “progress not perfection” is the key. We are often harder on ourselves than anyone else could ever be. On the other hand, sometimes the hypocrisy comes in the form of institutional or cultural pressures and demanding leaders who create conditions that oppose or conflict with compassionate and nurturing treatment of caregivers in the systems and environments in which they work. This is all the more reason for us as individuals working in the trenches to make self-care a top priority, perhaps above all else. We must demand it!
In closing, I would like to remind those of us who are in the business of caring for others (perhaps that’s all of us), that we (they) didn’t get here overnight. We have to meet them where they’re at and assist them in where they want, not where we want them, to go. I heard recently that those people we work with are not necessarily required to come to the process motivated. Perhaps like me, they didn’t listen very well when they were younger and are trying to undo years of ignorance and willful disobedience. Looking at it in that light, we can all find some peace in the process and relax and realize that, “one day at a time”, we can move forward with incremental change. I like the old adage that progress is often two or three steps forward and sometimes one or two back. Although health and wellness is often life or death, we are only really responsible for ourselves, ultimately, even though we may be charged with helping others in our care through motivation, accountability, and support. They have to want or desire it for themselves and, even though we can help them become more motivated, we can’t want it more than they do, or at least not much more. We can’t make their change about us or it will create more harm than good. Sometimes the “natural and logical” consequences of our own choices are the best motivator for change.
I have heard that when the pain of staying in the same place is greater than the pain of moving into change, we will, or else, as Plato said, we make the “worse appear the better,” or we just stop caring. Ignorance is different than not caring. Apathy and indifference are often deadly, first spiritually followed by emotional and then physical death, in that order if we are fortunate. Sometimes its reverse order and the latter two don’t matter! The amateur philosopher in me says we either live and learn or live and die, sooner. At the very least, we can avoid the minefields of life by modeling relationship and community, however imperfectly. We can be transformed in heart and soul through a caring “servant leadership” that lifts the “rising tide” of humanity a little higher.