Maximal Living
By UAB’s Mark A. Stafford, M.D., F.A.C.P.
Dedicated to helping you improve your quality of life.
In this column, I hope to share with you three things:
1. Learning how our bodies talk to us (they’re always speaking-sometimes whispering, sometimes screaming!) in health and disease.
2. Ways to maximize our quality of life by attending to the whole person-physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
3. Answers to questions you want to ask your doctor but are afraid, ashamed or just forget to ask.
Gravity is one of life’s immutable laws. And like most laws, we often spend a good deal of energy trying to break it. We may begin our journey floating in our mother’s protection, but from the moment our wiggling forms emerge, we are at risk of falling. One of a parent’s greatest thrills is watching their child pull themselves up for the first time, symbolically saying they are ready to attempt standing alone, an achievement many adults spend a lifetime trying to accomplish. With each step, from infancy to interdependence, we cannot escape gravity’s pull, our natural tendency to fall and stay down.
In fact, we often define and measure “progress” by how successfully one resists and overcomes cultural gravity? As children, we thrilled at climbing trees and making kites dance high in the March winds. In adolescence and young adulthood, we felt pride and adventure at resisting the geographic and psychological pull to stay “home.” Instead we chose to climb social trees and professional ladders toward that illusive tree house we learn to call “success.” Plastic surgery has even created a specialty dedicated to helping middle-aged and older adults resist gravity’s inexorable pull on various visible body parts. Sagging and drooping are not valued in our society.
What do we achieve by overcoming gravity? What drives us to continue resisting our natural urge to fall or lie down? Why do we physically try to see how high we can go? Even in Bible times men built the great Tower of Babel trying to reach Heaven. Why do we attach such significance to the world’s tallest buildings and bridges? Why the fascination with mountain climbing? And what compels us to resist intellectual and emotional gravity, committing countless hours to study and observation, overcoming the pull of complacency? Finally, what urges us spiritually upward, seeking Higher Meaning, Higher Purpose and Higher Power? Our motives are many and varied. Today, I offer only one. The view. We spend our lives seeking a view that will allow us to put our bodies and beliefs in context. Without expending the energy to overcome gravity, we are destined to restrict our vision to what is in front of us, living our lives with only our immediate surroundings, values and beliefs to compare to.
In seeking higher ground, we gain perspective. We realize there is a world beyond our limitations: new cultures, beliefs, values, thoughts and ideas. Our ancestors saw new lands and seas to cross while we, with the aid of rocket fuel, see new galaxies and universes. The “bird’s eye view” allows us to see over physical, mental and emotional barriers so we can appreciate complexity yet discover essence. While gravity pulls us earthward, I believe Another pulls us upward. For even as one part of us wants to lie down and “take our ease,” in the stillness, we hear a small voice urging us to pull ourselves up with the same determination we felt as toddlers. And though we repeatedly fall, we feel our hearts beckoning us to stand and rise again. We taste serenity when we realize our reward is being graced with the opportunity to begin again. But we need not forget that at every point along the way, our bodies and minds need refreshment. Like the “pull outs” along the Blue Ridge Parkway, the respite provides a view that can be magnificent. Enjoy the climb.
Dr. Mark