Sometimes you have to get ill before you can be well
When I was twenty-nine, I was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. It rocketed into my life out of the blue, robbed me of a year or more of ‘normality’ and left me with a lot of scars along with its teachings.
Like any illness which shocks its way into your life and pushes mortality to the forefront of the mind, my visit from the Big C was a strong invitation to pull on the handbrake, take stock and carry on living a lot more care-fully (sic). Experience is a powerful teacher, and often the most challenging experiences teach us the greatest lessons.
Covid-19 is one of these experiences, and seems to have a lot of lessons to teach us. Hurtling into our lives like a shockwave, the arrival of the pandemic brought us all to a crashing halt, inviting the entire world to pull on the handbrake and slow down. Lessons from Covid, Learning from lockdown - however we wish to phrase it, the virus has been teaching us all a thing or two as we ride the coronacoaster – teaching us things about ourselves, about the communities and societies around us, and about the natural world within and around us.
Whilst some illnesses may appear random – like the pandemic we’re experiencing – they often arrive as the result of something malignant lingering, something deeper that is making us ill and that needs looking at. On a personal level, my post-cancer recovery included a lot of thinking time alongside some healthy habit changes, as I took some time to look at patterns in my life which weren’t helping me to be well, or that may have increased my likelihood of becoming ill and causing the cancer in the first place.
These same thoughts and reflections have been present in many of our minds over the past few months during lockdown, as we’ve all been invited to take stock of our lives when the handbrake was cranked and the world slowed down for a quiet little while. Because let’s face it, we’re really not feeling very well and haven’t been for quite some time.
1. We’re not well in ourselves
One of the stark realities of coronavirus is how many illnesses we’re suffering from which have been exacerbated by the virus - from obesity and diabetes to a whole heap of different cancers – the scale of our illness is being brought to light with the high death rates of Covid being coupled with ‘other significant health issues’. Even UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson recognised that his unhealthiness contributed to his encounter with mortality and is now pushing for urgent action to tackle the fact that over two-thirds of the population are overweight. Let’s be real for a moment people – our bodies are really not very well.
Alongside the physical ailments, our emotional health is struggling big time. Stress, anxiety, overwhelm, depression – we have long seen a mental health crisis growing in our communities, and as anxiety soars post-lockdown, a mental health pandemic threatens. As so many of us grapple to find meaning and purpose in our lives, others suffer from what’s known as affluenza – a state of emotional distress rising from societies’ preoccupation with possessions and material growth – symptoms of the more-more-more mentality we’ve been encouraged into seeing as the meaning of life as oppose to focusing on building healthy relationships and having a more meaningful, purposeful, conscious connection to being.
2. We’re not well socially.
Mass protests across the world - from Black Lives Matter to social-inequality to climate justice - highlight the ever-growing problems in our societies and how ill some of our social systems have become. As we teeter on the edge of a global economic depression, the voices of the marginalised are becoming ever-louder, helping us all to recognise that our social systems need a whole-lot of care to help them to heal. The symptoms of our social illness may be easy for some to continue to ignore, but they simply do not and cannot support the masses or stand up to scrutiny -and the glaring symptoms are becoming ever more noticeable on the body-politic.
3. Our planet is sick
Whether we like to look at it or not, this illness is pretty massive and whether we admit it to ourselves or not, we’re all infected. We are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction filled with changing climates, rising sea levels, species depletion and eco-system collapse. The natural world is showing so many symptoms of our illness, we should all be dialling 999 and rushing to the emergency ward. The house is on fire, as Greta Thunberg keeps telling us. The inconvenient case of climate change may have been pushed to the back of our minds whilst dealing with seemingly more pressing issues of coronavirus, yet the climate crisis hasn’t gone anywhere; it’s just waiting for us to give it our fullest attention and help the planet (and consequently ourselves) to be well.
Three stages of illness – in ourselves, in our societies and across the natural world. They may appear sudden, out of the blue even, yet these symptoms have been growing more malignant for many years. The causes of these illnesses are due to a slow-growing separation from ourselves, from people around us and from the natural world, encouraged through so many of the patterns of behaviour in our communities over the course of human history, triggered by events such as the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution and the technological revolution.
Our collective illness is a consequence of what many leading thinkers call the three disconnects – or what Karl Marx coined our alienation from life: a slow-growing fragmentation over history which has transformed the basis of society and the relationships within, leaving us with unhealthy relationships to our sense of spirit, soul and purpose, to societies around us and with the natural world.
Slowing down is the best tonic
Often when we’re sick, all we can think about is getting better – reminiscing on the good old days when we felt well and lamenting ourselves for being so blasé about feeling healthy.
When Covid arrived, many of us started lamenting the ‘old normal’ when we could wander around freely, pop to the shops without having to wear a disguise, hang out in the crowd, hug. Many who caught the virus may also have reflected on their life choices before the pandemic came along as mortality is suddenly in the forefront of the mind. We are also being invited to look at how the inequality in our societies has allowed a disproportionate number of Covid cases in the BAME and low-economic communities in our societies.
Let’s face it - we could all do with looking a little bit deeper at some of the causes of our symptoms – to recognise just how much we can do to get ourselves healthy. I certainly cussed myself many times during my experience with breast cancer to not have focused more on my health before I got sick. Hindsight is a grand thing. As are second chances.
Lockdown gave many of us some time and space to step back a little and look a bit closer at what’s going on beyond ourselves. The more we step back from our daily lives and look at some of our behaviours and habits that are making us all ill (such as our work-life balance, our commuting habits, our diets etc.) and the more we talk about them and draw them into the open, the more inclined we are to do something about them. (This is why I am such an advocate for having conversations about ‘the big stuff’ and why talking about these issues really matters.) But one thing is really bothering me in all of these seemingly obvious levels of sickness we’re suffering from and that is this: Why are we not talking more about wellness?
Whilst political responses to Covid-19 have varied from country to country, many governments have launched a full-blown battle plan, with maxims of war and victory inviting us to fight, defeat, combat and overpower the ‘enemy’ that is Coronavirus. This hostile rhetoric is not surprising yet as familiar or comforting as the fight-flight mode may seem, it will not support us to be well in the long term, as this sort of response is just focused on the here and now and isn’t helping any of us to be strong, resilient and well in the long-term and to thrive when the next shockwave comes. As Joanna Macy states in the book Active Hope:
The unravlleing of our world comes, in part, from seeking security through battling enemies rather than addressing the threats presented by deepening inequalities, resource depletion and climate change..
The route to triple wellbeing.
During lockdown, many of us were given the opportunity to slow down a little and look at our lives a little more objectively, think about whether some of our habits were making us happy and reflect a little more deeply on where we were finding meaning in the patterns of our life. Whether it was the feeling of peace that emerged from those quieter days, the appreciation of more time with loved ones each day, the joy of having more autonomy over our working lives, many of us found neglected parts of ourselves that we’d love to nourish to help us to feel well in ourselves.
Lockdown offered an unspoken invitation towards social responsibility. Values of kindness, care and compassion abounded in many of our communities, with people helping those around them in need and rising up for the common good. From grocery shopping to doorstep conversations - so many of us felt the goodness of these moments - with communities rallying around, neighbours talking to each other (quite a rarity for many) and a strong sense of kindness and compassion in the air. Our innate abilities to care and exhibit behaviours for the common good shone through – and deep within us we recognised the vitalising effect of these feelings as we focused on creating more healthy and connected communities
A deer wandering the streets during lockdown.
Videos abounded of wildlife tiptoeing tentatively back into the spaces we’d so noisily inhabited as we stopped our endless push into the natural world. We welcomed the taste of clean air during lockdown – how fresh it was, how quiet the days were, how amazing it was to hear the birdsong again. And we all appreciated how good this felt – even if just for a moment. (Covid is also showing us the very clear and direct links between air pollution and virus infections – another powerful reason to curb some of our unhealthy habits across the natural world).
Even in these three little invitations towards wellness, lockdown helps us to see ways to ‘put ourselves back together again’ and find new patterns in our daily lives which focus on these three core ares of holistic wellness.
What if…
Being sick sucks. There’s no sugar-coating the feeling of illness, and none of us would actively choose to be ill if we could be well instead. What we could all do with right now is a big, fat dose of wellness. As the pandemic lingers on, we’ve been invited to recognise how it is now in our own interest for others to be well. For example, if you’ve got the virus, I am potentially at risk of being ill, but if you’re healthy, I can be safe and well around you etc. Therefore, it is in my interest to help you to be well, as this will inadvertently help me out too. Conversely, it’s in my interest to be well to stop me getting sick and infecting you. Harnessing behaviour for the common good is a very invitational space for us all moving forward – zooming out to see the benefit of collective care for our sake as well as for the health of others around us for the planet. The good news is that we’re wired to care. We’re hardwired for empathy, connection, love and compassion – these values are in our very DNA and are with us all from birth and so helping others to be well is innate in us all.
So what would happen if we became conscientious objectors to the systems around us that are making us ill and instead stood up for wellness? What if we carried on talking to our neighbours? If we kept using the bike for our commute rather than the car? If we went on those long walks every evening to enjoy the birdsong? If we spent more time with those we loved? What if we held onto this energy of care for the common good – kept focused on supporting healthiness in ourselves and those around us to focus on whole person, whole system, whole planet wellness: the route to what I call triple wellbeing by building healthy connections with ourselves, with others and with the natural world.
Giving ourselves purpose and focus is incredibly empowering in times where we feel adrift, and when the weight of the world can seem overwhelming, focusing on what we can do – individually, right here right now – is a strong way to step into an empowered space. Covid is brutal and causing a lot of grief and hardship across the planet – and yet at the same time Covid is gently slowing us all down and giving us permission to be well. The virus is inviting us all – the whole world - to slow down, take stock, stop fighting or running from (or into) what will keep making us ill, and instead focus on wellness - on strengthening and vitalising and injecting some serious healthiness back into our lives so that when the next shock comes we can bend, rather than break. And whilst waiting around for vaccines and antidotes is one way of waiting to defeat this current illness, a daily dose of triple wellbeing sounds like a pretty good medicine to me.
By Rachel Musson | Founding Director of ThoughtBox Education CIC.
ThoughtBox works with schools to offer range of triple wellbeing programmes supporting whole-child, whole-system wellness.