Health is largely about perceptions, attitudes and learned behaviors. How you perceive your health is an important factor in determining your state of well-being. Those who dwell on their ill health, overly identify with their condition, use their diagnosis as a badge of honour, or complain constantly about their aches and pains will rarely achieve good health.
Modern society has developed an entrenched and unhealthy victim mentality of health and disease. The perception that humans are helpless victims placed in a hostile environment and, as such, must wage a constant battle against all manner of foreign invaders is pathetic. This notion undermines our self-confidence as a species. That attitude leads us to a self-fulfilling prophecy that sickness is inevitable.
Sickness and disease are not inevitable. Human life should be much like a candle. Once it is lit, a candle should burn brightly from beginning to end, sputter once or twice and go out. We should not need frequent or continuous external help to keep us burning brightly. Having to be re-lit, propped up and coaxed along by medicines and surgeries indicates that we are doing something quite incorrectly.
When you develop the attitude that the cause of illness is external then it follows that you are led to think the remedy is external as well. If disease comes from viruses and bacteria found in your surroundings and as such you have little or no control over these things, then, when you fall ill, you feel helplessly put-upon and reach for some external treatment.
If you attend a family picnic and eat some spoiled potato salad, you will probably develop a raging case of vomiting and/or diarrhea. Are you sick or are you well? Are vomiting and diarrhea not your body’s natural way of expelling undesirable foods that, if absorbed, could only lead to more serious illness?
What is your body’s natural response to having something foreign in your eye? How about watering and possibly itching? So then what is an allergy? An allergy is the presence of irritating dust or pollen on the surface of your eye, or on the sensitive internal membranes of your nose. Your body wants to expel these irritations; consequently, you sneeze, your nose runs, your eyes water and itch. If we recognize and acknowledge that these are natural reactions perhaps we would be less likely to suppress these symptoms and complicate or compromise our internal nature. We would be more likely to try and figure out a way to enhance our natural abilities to deal with this pollen problem.
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