Health and Human Happiness
April 2013
Banner photo: Beijing, China [© Lane Oatey/Blue Jean Images/Getty Images]
Health and Human Happiness
The Roman saying, "A healthy mind in a healthy body," expresses the need for both physical and mental well-being. The human quest for a healthy way of life, despite increased life expectancy, is ongoing. Health is usually seen as the natural condition of life, and when sickness occurs, this is seen as a sign that our nature has gone off course because of a physical or mental imbalance.
The advances of modern medicine mean that more diseases are treatable, yet in developed countries, for instance, mental disease seems to be on the rise with the incidence of depression now outstripping heart disease. In the modern approach to medicine, illness is seen as an aberration, but in other approaches, sickness and wellness are seen as part of a continuum, and good health is gained by balanced interactions between life and its environment.
As illness will never be eradicated, even by medical science, what is the role of the physician? American journalist Norman Cousins noted that a physician should also be a philosopher--someone who helps activate what he described as our innate healing system and system of conviction, which work together to solve illness. Rather than aiming to conquer illness, the physician therefore strives to restore and strengthen this balance.
The experience of illness and the attendant desire to recover can bring about a change in the human heart, a deeper understanding of our own mortality, our connection with others and with life itself. Martin Luther King Jr. recognized that our quest for individual health cannot be seen in isolation from the broader question of society's health. He wrote: "We are caught in an inescapable garment of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny . . . As long as there is poverty in the world, no man can be totally rich even if he has a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people cannot be expected to live more than 20 or 30 years, no man can be totally healthy even if he just got the cleanest bill of health from the finest clinics in America."
This issue of the SGI Quarterly looks at health in relation to both life and death, showing how a healthy life is rooted in a strong sense of purpose and energy, or life force. This way of living cannot simply be evaluated by a statistical analysis of the numbers of years we are alive, our economic output or the number of diseases we encounter during the course of our lives.
