The school of life

Jefferson Breland

(3/2024) If you are reading this, I am guessing you are alive. I am also guessing you were alive yesterday and the day before that and the day before that and so on and so forth. Most of you, I imagine, are wishing you will be alive tomorrow.

So what’s it all about? This thing we call life; this being alive thing. This is the eternal question humans have been asking since the dawn of time, I am guessing.

I hope you didn’t get your hopes up that I would have the answer here. I don’t.

What I do know is when we pay attention to life we get clues about the meaning of our existence. We don’t even have to work hard. If we begin to listen a little bit more closely, see a bit more clearly, feel the hand of a beloved in our hand a little bit more warmly, really taste and savor the food we give ourselves, if we stop and smell the roses so to speak (and literally), we will begin to sense the meaning of life a bit more deeply. We will know more than we did the day before. We may feel a bit more connected to the people and events in our life.

I also know when we begin to experience all that happens in our life more neutrally, life will be smoother, not necessarily easier, but smoother. By this I mean, in Nature, there are simply events. Even if they are frightening or painful, we can observe them not as problems, but opportunities. We can begin to see a purpose to everything and we will be able to navigate life a bit easier.

I understand this is a radical concept. In our culture we are practiced at dramatizing life into operatic-scale stories in which it is often "Us versus Them." We want to be the heroes of our life overcoming adversity and winning everything.

If we truly examine our hopes and wishes, I wonder how many of us simply want a simple life, a good life. This will mean different things for each of us because we are different beings.

What if a good life were as simple as having more "Good" in our life?

How might we do this?

One way of having more "Good" in our life is to understand and apply the following "Life Rules.": 1 - There are no accidents; 2 - Everything is happening for a reason; 3- Everything is happening for good; and, 4 - Can you see the good?

Everything? Yes, everything.

As you may know, I am a licensed healthcare provider. People usually come to me when they are experiencing physical symptoms with an accompanying medical diagnosis.

So yes, even with serious illness and painful symptoms I apply the "Life Rules."

Symptoms are the body’s natural way of telling us to pay attention and do something different. It is in this way that symptoms are happening for the good, our good. Symptoms are our teacher. A teacher calling us to live better.

Symptoms offer us the opportunity to take action to help ourselves. Like the "check engine" light in our car, symptoms point to sometimes subtle and sometimes profound ways that something in our bodies or in our lives is out of balance and needs attention.

We can ignore the "check engine" light in our car, put tape over it so we can’t see it. We can turn up the music in the car when the engine makes a funny noise so we can’t hear it. As many of us know, if we ignore our cars’ warning lights, rather than needing a simple oil change, we might need a new transmission or a new engine. Which would you rather pay for?

I grew up in a house where in the cabinet above the stove, there was a bottle of ibuprofen and a bottle of antacid tablets. In this way, I learned to ignore my body’s "check engine" light of smaller symptoms like a headache or indigestion. It was my family’s way of addressing these regular "check engine lights."

For years, I masked the symptoms of headaches and a sour stomach with these medicines. It never occurred to me I had a choice, much less the ability to make them go away without medicines; in other words, to heal myself. It never occurred to me to look at these symptoms like a cut or a scratch.

I knew how to tend these injuries and let my body heal itself. I knew if I disinfected the cut, kept it clean and covered with a bandage, my body would heal itself. Simple, right?

I did not think to apply my body’s innate, powerful healing ability to the rest of my body. Our healing ability is available to us for even more complicated issues if we see our symptoms as teachers offering the opportunity to pay attention and create the conditions to heal ourselves.

As for the headaches and indigestion symptoms, I was lucky. The worst my indigestion got was advancing to acid reflux with the stomach acid irritating my vocal cords. I was prescribed a strong stomach-acid reducer. At the same time I learned relaxation techniques which helped me address the root cause of my symptoms, stress. When I learned how to reduce and release the stress in my life and be more peaceful, my symptoms stopped returning.

In general, if we know these "lesser" symptoms are here to teach us and take the opportunity to make small, sustainable changes in lifestyle or diet, we might avoid more serious conditions.

Lifestyle modifications don’t mean that we have to give up foods we love or activities that help us enjoy life. Modifications help us learn what helps and what does not help our body. It is a simple practice of trying new things and observing what changes or not.

Making small and sustainable changes affords us the opportunity to pay closer attention to what we eat and its effect on our body. Observing our emotions in different situations offers us the opportunity to respond differently. A lifestyle change might be something as simple as getting into bed 30 minutes earlier. Another change might be as simple turning off our cell phones, computers or tablets an hour before bed. What about watching or reading less news? The key with all of these shifts is to be patient and pay attention. The benefits might not show up quickly, and they might. We never know.

Our symptoms offer us choices. If we are able to observe our symptoms and what actions increase or decrease their effect on our body, we learn we have more influence on our health than many of us know.

Please note I am not saying to ignore your symptoms. I am actually asking you to pay more attention to them. I am also asking you to examine how your life might be contributing to the situation without judgment. This is not a blame game.

If certain symptoms persist, I recommend scheduling an appointment with your primary care physician or your local acupuncturist to gain some insight about how you can help yourself.

Symptoms are not accidents. Symptoms are happening for a reason. The reason is for your good. Symptoms are an opportunity to wake up to your life and how you might help yourself. They teach us that we have choices.

Symptoms teach us the value of life.

As the old story goes, I tell my doctor, "It hurts when I do this." And the doctor says, "Don't do that." There is simple truth in this.

Jefferson Breland is a board-certified acupuncturists licensed in Pennsylvania and Maryland with offices in Gettysburg and Towson, respectively.
He can be reached at 410-336-5876.