Acceptance

I think that almost all of illness is acceptance. These days, acceptance is very hard to find. Some people are devasted when they acquire an illness. This may be a serious illness, or a mild one. So the severity of the illness is not what causes the amount of suffering that results. It's something about the person that dictates how much suffering an illness produces. There is ailment, disease, illness, sickness: all various terms with different nuances which reflect slightly different perceptions.
We go through life facing challenges. There are challenges almost every moment of every day. Events and our perceptions of them can be of two basic varieties: blessings and challenges. Or, we can have events that we just don't classify. But we rarely do that. We rarely say "This is like this." We say "This is like this, and that isn't good." or "This is like this, and that is good." It's our tendency, almost a reflex, to judge each event as good or as bad. Our entire culture is dedicated to that process. People make stuff and they love it and want to sell it. So they go on television and they tell us how fantastic this thing is, and that we need it because without this our lives cannot be complete. So we want that thing, or we go out and get it. Things that once were challenges have disappeared. We used to have to try to get a hold of someone. We would say, "I've been trying to reach you." We called them at home, and they weren't there. So we would have to call again later. Then, there was an answering machine, so we no longer had to call back later: we could leave a message. Then, since that was too much trouble, we all got cell phones. Now we can reach everyone everywhere, no matter what. Some people turn off the cell phone at the movies. But a lot of them just put it on silence. My daughter can't handle turning her cell phone off. She believes that if her cell phone is turned off, she will die or the world will end. It's an unacceptable notion.
There are things that we can't accept anymore: dial up modems take too long. Computers with a hard drive less than a billion trillion gigabytes, cars without defrosters, and almost all inconveniences. I can't be expected to work in outrageous conditions, like when the air conditioner isn't working right. I have to call the emergency air conditioner service right away.
So, when illness comes we expect that someone is going to eliminate that inconvenience for us. We have that power over the world. The television infotainment news with its thirty second or less "news" covers medicine in only two ways. 1) The medical community with brilliant science and incredible technology has miraculously cured this previously impossible disease and will be able to make us live forever within the week! 2) The medical community is nothing but pure evil and incompetence and the doctors are going around wrecklessly killing everyone and cutting off the wrong leg! You can't get upset with the media. Their job is not to inform us. Their job is to make money for the huge money making companies that own the networks by getting big ratings. Big ratings come from spectacular and fascinating events which are easy to understand. Medicine is not easy to understand.
But there is illness and disease that has no cure. It degenerates us and it is our nature to die, sometimes suddenly and sometimes slowly. Medicine, technology, and power and money can't change this. So we are left with being forced to accept how it is. There is no choice.
I have patients who can do it, and patients who can't. And I think the ones who can are the ones who suffer less. The purpose of illness is to accept our humanity and understand the nature of living and dying. It helps us to look at our true priorities, because it leaves us with nothing else. Disease destroy bodies. That's all. We are all very attached to our bodies. So when our bodies are being destroyed, we say "This is how it is; and this is bad." But if we could avoid that reflex, we would say, "This is how it is." Then what?
Then, we can ask "What happens when I lose my body? What is left?" Well, we are more than a body, I think. The question that really counts is if we allow the loss of the body to consume our minds and steal our spirit. If it doesn't, then it sharpens the mind and strengthens the spirit. That is how we accept our human physical frailty: we trade off the body for an increased spirit. Then we give up our body altogether and nothing but spirit is left.