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Programs & Services
• JULY 11, 2009
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Summer/Fall 2009 |
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Surviving & Thriving by Bernie Siegel, MD Today in an e-mail, one of those spontaneous bits of advice I sent to someone that comes from God knows where, enlightened me. My message was, “There are no answers, only choices.” When you realize that you can go on asking questions for an eternity and still have no answers to the uncertainties we all must live with, you stop questioning why and start making decisions about your life. We all have choices. Several years ago a young man I know was sexually and psychologically abused by his parents and others. He decided to commit suicide when he learned he had AIDS. I asked him why he didn’t decide to kill his parents. I said we could get a gun and kill them instead of his killing himself. What would your answer be? I asked a survivor who was seven at the time of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, why the Japanese didn’t try to get even with the United States for what we did to them. When you listen to what this child went through you have to wonder why he and others don’t hate us. What would your choice have been? The boy said, “I never wanted to be like my parents.” He chose to love. The survivor of Hiroshima said, “The Japanese choose the upward path, not the downward way. That is our nature.” These are people who had choices and chose the uplifting path that can lead to healing. Both of them are alive today because they chose to love. That is not an easy decision for a member of the human race, but we expect it of our animals. Mark Twain, inspired by the nineteenth century animosity amongst Christian denominations, wrote about being upset by the worldwide discord amongst God’s creatures. He decided to take the matter in hand and built a cage into which he put a dog and a cat. After a little training they lived in peace. Encouraged he added a pig, a goat, a kangaroo, a bird etc. and they learned to live in peace and harmony. He was so encouraged he added an Irish Catholic, a Scotch Presbyterian, a Methodist from Arkansas, a Salvation Army Colonel, a Jew from Jerusalem, a Muslim from Turkistan, a Hindu from Benares, a Buddhist from China and a Baptist Missionary he met along the way. After a very short period of time there wasn’t a living thing left in the cage. Laurens van der Post, a citizen of South Africa and a Japanese prisoner of war, wrote about the solution in A Far Off Place. The essence of what he said was that we must pray that all the bitterness be taken from us so we may start again without hatred. From our suffering we must learn that life cannot begin for the better without forgiving one another. If one does not forgive, one cannot understand, and if one does not understand, one is afraid, and if one is afraid one hates, and if one hates, one cannot love. If one cannot love, no new beginning is possible. The first step towards love must be forgiveness. We must remember we are all one family, the same color inside. We must heal from the inside out. Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach wrote that when all the Cains of the world cry and beg for forgiveness and lie down next to all the Abels they killed, miracles will happen. Abel will open his eyes and all the creatures of the world will begin to dance. The Beatles song Imagine is a wonderful example. “No countries and no religions too, nothing to fight or die for, a brotherhood of man. You may think I’m a dreamer but I’m not the only one. Why don’t you come and join me and the world can live as one.” Start imagining what choices you can make to help heal the world. When you choose to say to someone robbing you, “I know that behind that mask is someone I could love” you may be rewarded, as was the minister who said it. Ten years later, the man who ran away when she said those words came to her church to thank her for what she had done for him that day. The thing that holds most of us back is fear. If you are filled with fear, you will have a difficult time making choices. We manifest what we visualize…and our fear creates images of all the things that could go wrong. I see this every day as a physician. When you see your choice of treatment as a mutilation, poison, hell, assault, insult or an affliction, think of what the side effects and outcome are likely to be. This is true of serious illnesses and natural events like childbirth. When you see your treatment of choice as a gift from God, the benefits are amazing and side effects minimal. So visualize success… make choices and decisions that are life-enhancing and creative. The key to thriving is to be sure others are not making the choices for you and that you are living your authentic life. How will you know when this is true? Very simple...just ask yourself if you are doing what makes you happy. Are you doing what feels right for you? Are you spending your lifetime doing what others prescribe or are you making the decisions? Are you able to say “no” when you do not want to do something? If you are following your feelings, then you will not only survive but thrive. Times are difficult and, therefore, we should live every day with a sense of discipline to keep us true to our beliefs while doing the work our Creator put us here to accomplish. Yes, there are days I wish Creation had stopped after the animals were created but that is not for me to say. So every day I express my gratitude for the opportunity to experience life, confess my weaknesses and loss of direction, ask God to intercede in the lives of those I love and petition God to help me to find my way and make the right choices. With God’s help I have nothing to fear. Let me finish with two Adam and Eve stories. One by Mark Twain tells of God giving Adam a chance to stay in the Garden of Eden. God will provide him with another woman and Eve will be ejected since she led him to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Adam answers, “I would rather be out of the Garden with her than in it without her.” That is a choice and that is what love is about. Your garden of Eden is where you put your love. When Eve dies Adam carves on her grave stone, “Where so ever Eve is, Eden is.” Yes! The other is a story my Eve tells. When she is doing her one liners, she tells of God offering Adam "a wonderful woman who will cook, care for the kids and animals, clean the house, never complain or have a headache etc.” Adam asks, “What will this cost me?” God answers, “An arm and a leg.” Adam responds, “What can I get for a rib?" ”And as my beautiful wife Bobbie says, “The rest is history.”
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