Through Sickness And Health Quotes

Mental illness People assume you aren’t sick unless they see the sickness on your skin like scars forming a map of all the ways you’re hurting. My heart is a prison of Have you tried?s Have you tried exercising? Have you tried eating better? Have you tried not being sad, not being sick? Have you tried being more like me? Have you tried shutting up? Yes, I have tried. Yes, I am still trying, and yes, I am still sick. Sometimes monsters are invisible, and sometimes demons attack you from the inside. Just because you cannot see the claws and the teeth does not mean they aren’t ripping through me. Pain does not need to be seen to be felt. Telling me there is no problem won’t solve the problem. This is not how miracles are born. This is not how sickness works.

Health is the natural condition. When sickness occurs, it is a sign that Nature has gone off course because of a physical or mental imbalance. The road to health for everyone is through moderation, harmony, and a 'sound mind in a sound body'.

It is not good for all our wishes to be filled; through sickness we recognize the value of health; through evil, the value of good; through hunger, the value of food; through exertion, the value of rest.

I self-medicate with fat, carbohydrates, and Jane Austen, my number one drug of choice, my constant companion through every breakup, every disappointment, every crisis. Men might come and go, but Jane Austen was always there. In sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, till death do us part.

Let me tell you the truth about the world to which you so desperately want to return. It is a place of pain and suffering and grief. When you left it, cities were being attacked. Women and children were being blasted to pieces or burned alive by bombs dropped from planes flown by men with wives and children of their own. People were being dragged from their homes and shot in the street. Your world is tearing itself apart, and the most amusing thing of all is that it was little better before the war started. War merely gives people an excuse to indulge themselves further, to murder with impunity. There were wars before it, and there will be wars after it, and in between people will fight one another and hurt one another and maim one another and betray one another, because that is what they have always done. And even if you avoid warfare and violent death, little boy, what else do you think life has in store for you? You have already seen what it is capable of doing. It took your mother from you, drained her of health and beauty, and then cast her aside like the withered, rotten husk of a fruit. It will take others from you too, mark me. Those whom you care about--lovers, children--will fall by the wayside, and your love will not be enough to save them. Your health will fail you. You will become old and sick. Your limbs will ache, your eyesight will fade, and your skin will grow lined and aged. There will be pains deep within that no doctor will be able to cure. Diseases will find a warm, moist place inside you and there they will breed, spreading through your system, corrupting it cell by cell until you pray for the doctors to let you die, to put you out of your misery, but they will not. Instead you will linger on, with no one to hold your hand or soothe your brow, as Death comes and beckons you into his darkness. The life you left behind you is no life at all. Here, you can be king, and I will allow you to age with dignity and without pain, and when the time comes for you to die, I will send you gently to sleep and you will awaken in the paradise of your choosing, for each man dreams his own heaven.

Anyone can say 'I love you', however so many other sayings carry more weight in a relationship: “I understand what you went through because I went through it too.” “I believe you and in you.” “I see the pain you are going through and we will conquer this together.” “I don’t want to change you. I just want to help you become the best version of yourself.” “You matter to me, therefore I will be there for you always.” "I will never keep things from you because you have my respect and friendship. If I find out someone is putting you down, I will stand up for you. ” “Your character will always shine when I speak about you because to damage your name is to damage ours.” “I will go to the ends of the earth to save you from yourself or others.” “What you have to say is important to me because I see you’re hurting and that hurts me, so I am going to listen. Together we will solve this problem.” “I don’t care about your past. That was yesterday. Today, we are going to start over because people make mistakes, but they don’t have to pay for them for the rest of their life.” "How can I help you get through this?" “In sickness or in health...I meant it and I will search the world to find a way to keep you in it because you mean that much to me.” “I don’t want to be your parent. I want to be your best friend, lover, cheering section, playmate and fill all the important parts of your soul. Together we will fill the rest as equals.

Don't let sickness, depression, and disease THUG YOU OUT. Eat healthier, think healthier, speak healthier, and more positively over your life. When you do so, you will soon begin to conquer your life and your health through new found empowerment- mind, body, and spirit.

But surely if you loved someone it was your job to stick with him? To help him through the depression? In sickness and in health, and all that?

Through neglect, ignorance, or inability, the new intellectual Borgias cram hairballs down our throats and refuse us the convulsion that could make us well. They have forgotten, if they ever knew, the ancient knowledge that only by being truly sick can one regain health. Even beasts know when it is good and proper to throw up. Teach me how to be sick then, in the right time and place, so that I may again walk in the fields and with the wise and smiling dogs know enough to chew sweet grass.

Love is scary! Taking a vow to love someone through sickness and health, for richer for poorer, forsaking all others, until death do us part, is the most terrifying experience a person can have. Why pretend any differently?

The body is a treacherous friend. Give it its due; no more. Pain and pleasure are transitory; endure all dualities with calmness, trying at the same time to remove yourself beyond their power. Imagination is the door through which disease as well as healing enters. Disbelieve in the reality of sickness even when you are ill; an unrecognized visitor will flee!

You're as sick as your secrets.

I would self-medicate with fat, carbohydrates, and Jane Austen, my number one drug of choice, my constant companion through every breakup, every disappointment, every crisis. Men might come and go, but Jane Austen was always there in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, till death do us part.

I solemnly vow that I will safeguard and hold dear and deep in my heart our union and you, I promise to love you faithfully, forsaking all others, through the good times and the bad, in sickness and in health, regardless of where life takes us. I will protect you, trust you, and respect you. I will share your joys and sorrows and comfort you in times of need. I promise to cherish you and uphold your hopes and dreams and keep you safe at my side. All that is mine is now yours. I give you my hand, my heart, and my love from this moment on for as long as we both shall live." - Christian Grey

Animals are a lot like humans for when we are happy our immunity is strong and love and life force races through our veins. When we are depressed our immunity runs low and we can easily get sick. Many pet parents are very careful about feeding the right food, providing plenty of exercise and buying the right toys and treats. Not that those things aren’t important too, for they are, but the best thing you can do for us is to make yourself happy because when you are happy then we are happy too.

Human mind and body metals appear to be lost through radio frequency exposure and I call this hypothesis: Internal Human Corrosion

TRIBUTE TO A DOG The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog. A man’s dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master’s side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer; he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounter with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wing and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens.

I promise to love you faithfully, forsaking all others, through the good times and the bad, in sickness and in health, regardless of where life takes us. I will protect you, trust you, and respect you. I will share your joys and sorrows and comfort you in times of need. I promise to cherish you and uphold your hopes and dreams and keep you safe at my side. All that is mine is now yours. I give you my hand, my heart, and my love from this moment on for as long as we both shall live.

We don’t know what’s going to happen, but I can make a promise to you right now. Your hand’s going to be in mine the entire time. Kiersten, I swear to never let you go. Through sickness, through health, through happy times, through sad times. I’m yours.

He knows he used to be able to control you with charm, affection and promises. He also remembers how well intimidation or aggression worked at other times. Now both of these tools are losing their effectiveness, so he tries to increase the voltages. He may switch erratically back and forth between the two like a doctor who cycles a patient through a range of antibiotics, trying to find the one that will get the infection under control. And the analogy is an apt one, because an abuser sees his (ex-) partner's growing strength and independence as a sickness rather than as the harbinger of health that it actually is.

To love the Lord my God with all my soul will involve a spiritual cost. I'll have to give Him my heart, and let Him love through it whom and how He wills, even if this seems at times to break my heart. To love the Lord my God with all my soul will involve a volitional and emotional cost. I'll have to give Him my will, my rights to decide and choose, and all my relationships, for Him to guide and control, even when I cannot understand His reasoning. To love the Lord my God with all my mind will involve an intellectual cost. I must give Him my mind, my intelligence, my reasoning powers, and trust Him to work through them, even when He may appear to act in contradiction to common sense. To love the Lord my God with all my strength will involve a physical cost. I must give Him my body to indwell, and through which to speak, whether He chooses health or sickness, by strength or weakness, and trust Him utterly with the outcome.

You will know if you are too acidic if you get sick often, get urinary tract infections, suffer from headaches, and have bad breath and body odor (when you do not use antiperspirant). Acidosis is the medical term for a blood alkalinity of less than 7.35. A normal reading is called homeostasis. It is not considered a disease; although in and of itself it is recognized as an indicator of disease. Your blood feeds your organs and tissues; so if your blood is acidic, your organs will suffer and your body will have to compensate for this imbalance somehow. We need to do all we can to keep our blood alkalinity high. The way to do this is to dramatically increase our intake of alkaline-rich elements like fresh, clean air; fresh, clean water; raw vegetables (particularly their juices); and sunlight, while drastically reducing our intake of and exposure to acid-forming substances: pollution, cigarettes, hard alcohol, white flour, white sugar, red meat, and coffee. By tipping the scales in the direction of alkalinity through alkaline diet and removal of acid waste through cleansing, and acidic body can become an alkaline one. "Bear in mind that some substances that are alkaline outside the body, like milk, are acidic to the body; meaning that they leave and acid reside in the tissues, just as many substances that are acidic outside the body, like lemons and ripe tomatoes, are alkaline and healing in the body and contribute to the body's critical alkaline reserve.

Elijah kisses my forehead and I close my eyes as an anxious feeling pumps through me. It’s me and him, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, til death do us part. Our journey as a married couple has just began. And I can’t wait until we arrive at the first stop of the many stops in the journey of our lives.

You think I needed you? You don't think I could have given Myrna Mountweazel a Benadryl so she'd sleep through my stealing the safe from under my parents' bed? Or snuck into your bedroom while you were sleeping and taken your car key? I didn't need you, you idiot. I picked you. And then you picked me back." Now she looked at me. "And that's like a promise. At least for tonight. In sickness and in health. In good times and in bad. For richer, for poorer. Till dawn do us part.

Some of us fall through the unseen cracks in the world of health on a bright summer’s day through a run-in with machine or microbe, like Alice down the rabbit hole. Some of us were born this way. And some find out that our genes have hidden within them a ticking time bomb. Waiting. Silently. However we got here, we are now inhabitants of the state of sickness. Our papers for the world of health have been rescinded without notice. Our body-world has been colonised by patriarchs, and we, the natives, should know our place: small folded patient, compliant, silent, not defiant. They seem to believe that our bodies are just an errant version of theirs. That our souls are not woman-shaped on the inside. That it’s not our place to take our space and insist on our inner difference. Their gospel is scribbled down on prescription pads in spider scrawl. They are not to be questioned, especially not with our own heresy.

How, then, was she--his wife, who'd taken a vow to remain with him in sickness and in health--supposed to justify ending the marriage and breaking up their family after everything they have been through? When all she really wanted was the man she'd once believed him to be

Oh, my friends, the first wish I have for the new year is to change the worn-out greeting: 'happy new year'. There is no happiness, only fleeting moments of joy. There is nothing new under the sun, only new ways of looking at the same eternal challenges and unresolved questions. There is no point in wishing for a perfect health in a profoundly sick world – the view is much clearer and more interesting when living on the edge. And so, I wish you all endurance as we go through another difficult year. I wish you courage to snatch a few more days (or moments) of joy as another year slips through the fingers of Time. I wish you much strength to maintain your equilibrium as we face new earthquakes of uncertainty in the coming year. Most of all, I wish we never give up on the possibility of doing things otherwise. And, of course, I wish you much love.

The sick were a ferocious lot. They’d walk right through you if they thought that health was on the other side.

Krishnamurti said, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

After years of voyaging through the USA medical system and taking prescription drugs, I was sicker than when I started the process.

If you have no health, then you have no business

The route back to health is to retrace your steps through sickness to understand the toxins you were exposed to.

What issues sidetrack you from your mission to get well?

You must form the habit of living in the fourth dimension, “The World of the Wondrous.” It is the world where you do not judge by appearances. You have trained your inner eye to see through failure into success, to see through sickness into health, to see through limitation into plenty. I will give to you the land which your inner eye sees. “I will give to you the land which thou seeth.

For example, my choice of career. You generously and patiently gave me complete freedom.  Though this followed the habits, or at least the values, of the Jewish middle class concerning their sons.  And here your misunder-standing of my character worked its effect, which – together with your father’s pride – blinded you to my real nature: to my weakness.  In your opinion, I was always studying as a child, and  later I was always writing.  Looking back that      is certainly not true.  I can say with very little exaggeration, I barely studied and I learnt nothing; to have retained something after so many years of education wasn’t remarkable for a man with a memory and some intelligence;  but given the vast expenditure of time and money, and my outwardly easy, unburdened life, what I achieved with regard to knowledge, especially sound knowledge, was nothing – certainly when compared to what others managed.  It is lamentable, but for me understandable.  I always had such a deep concern about the continued existence of my mind and spirit, that I was indifferent to everything else.  Jewish schoolboys have a reputation, for amongst them one finds the most improbable things; but my cold, barely disguised, permanent, childish, ridiculous, animal, self-satisfied indifference, and my cold and fantastical mind, are not things that I have ever met again – though admittedly they were just a defence against nervous destruction through fear and guilt.  And I was worried about myself in all manner of ways.  For example, I was worried about my health: I was worried about my hair falling out, my digestion, and my back – for it was stooped.  And my worries turned to fear and it all ended in true sickness.  But what was all that?  Not actual bodily sickness.  I was sick because I was a disinherited son, who needed constant reassurance about his own peculiar existence, who in the most profound sense never owned anything, and who was even insecure about the thing which was next to him: his own body. 

1859. Some of the causes of insanity were listed as: ill health, loss of property, excessive use of tobacco, dissipation, domestic affliction, epilepsy, masterbation, home-sickness, injury of the head. The largest category was "unknown.

When God brought the children of Israel out of Egypt to bring them into the Promised Land, He made sure that none of them were sick. Psalm 105:37 37He also brought them out with silver and gold, and there was none feeble among His tribes.

The average person walks into their doctor's office ready to accept whatever is said and handed to them. Without taking time to research or gain more insight, they accept pills and treatment without looking into other options. Our nation overeats. We put toxic fake food into our bodies, but wonder why we're sick. We continue a vicious cycle of consuming the wrong foods and drinks along with a stressful lifestyle, yet question why cancer is so rampant. Most of our society live in fear and believe they have no control. My positive message is that we do have control. We need to take back ownership of our bodies and minds. Don't blindly fill prescriptions without first checking into potential side effects, adverse reactions, and long-term damage to your body and mind. Be conscious of what you are consuming. Be informed. Take the initiative to gain more knowledge. Understand your options so you may be in a better position to make an informed choice.

I felt the familiar charge of responsibility. It had a narcotic effect on me, this sense of mild suffering, the feeling of being needed, of being poised to go through something. If he was sick, I would nurse him back to health. I relished the idea.

I have a soft spot in my heart for suicidal people. I know that others make presumptions about suicidal people, painting them with the darkest of paints; but the way that I see it, these are people who look out into the world and see how broken it is and they look into their lives and they remember all the people they've hurt and then they look into themselves and they are faced with how ruined they are and they think that if they can't make anything really better then they just shouldn't exist anymore. It's not a form of selfishness or mental illness. It's a form of extreme state of empathy and selflessness. Suicidal people really are the best kinds of people. But they need to know that this world has a place for them, that this world needs the kind of light that they carry with them as they walk through it, they need to know that they have a home. That their type of darkness is like the darkness of the universe: it's the type of darkness from whence comes forth the light! Some people are just okay with everything, they don't feel the pain and the guilt that comes with the way that this world is. And I don't think that the lack of feeling makes anybody healthier in the mind. Our world is sick. And some people know that. These are not the sick people, these are the beautiful creatures!

The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog. A man’s dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master’s side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer; he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounter with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wing and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens. —SENATOR GEORGE VEST, 1870 Each

The first big step is to repair the safety net so that workers and families are no longer at perpetual risk of falling through and drowning, as millions have in the pandemic. This means essentially extending the New Deal to more Americans in more areas of their lives: universal health care, child care, paid family and sick leave, stronger workplace safety protections, unemployment insurance that doesn’t fail in a crisis, a living minimum wage. These are the basis for any decent life, for any American to do more than survive just below the misery line.

SUMMARY OF YOUR AIDS TO HEALTH • Find out what it is that heals you. Realize that correct directions given to your subconscious mind will heal your mind and body. • Develop a definite plan for turning over your requests or desires to your subconscious mind. • Imagine the end desired and feel its reality. Follow it through, and you will get definite results. • Decide what belief is. Know that belief is a thought in your mind and that what you think you create. • It is foolish to believe in sickness or in anything that will hurt or harm you. Believe in perfect health, prosperity, peace, wealth, and divine guidance. • Great and noble thoughts upon which you habitually dwell become great acts. • Apply the power of prayer therapy in your life. Choose a certain plan, idea, or mental picture. Unite mentally and emotionally with that idea. As you remain faithful to your mental attitude, your prayer will be answered. • Always remember, if you really want the power to heal, you can have it through faith, which means a knowledge of the working of your conscious and subconscious mind. Faith comes with understanding. • Blind faith means that a person may get results in healing without any scientific understanding of the powers and forces involved. • Learn to pray for your loved ones who may be ill. Quiet your mind. Your thoughts of health, vitality, and perfection operating through the one universal subjective mind will be felt and made manifest in the mind of your loved

Silver mining in the United States didn’t start, like hard-core, until the mid-1850s,” Louis said. “And only really got big when the Comstock Lode was discovered in 1859 in California.” “It was bad work. Dangerous. Like any mining. But silver also lets out fumes when it’s mined. Even Pliny the Elder wrote about how harmful the fumes were, especially to animals. You know Pliny the Elder?” “The problem with the silver fumes,” Louis continued, “is that, over time, they gave the miners delusions. Bad enough that they had to stop mining. Their health deteriorated. And a bunch of them even died.” Hard to make fun of something like that, so Pepper didn’t. “Do you know what people would say, in these mining towns, when they saw one of these miners falling apart? Walking through town muttering and swinging at phantoms? They said the Devil in Silver got them. It became shorthand. Like someone might say, ‘What happened to Mike?’ And the answer was always the same. ‘The Devil in Silver got him.’ ” Louis sat straight and crossed his arms and surveyed the table. “Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?” “You’re saying we’re just making this thing up,” Pepper said quietly. Louis seemed disappointed. He dropped his hands into his lap and folded them there. He looked at his sister and Pepper. He turned his head to take in the other patients gathered with their family members there in the hospital. “I’m saying they were dying,” Louis said. “They definitely weren’t making that up. But it wasn’t a monster that was killing them. It was the mine.

For Nature, if she once endows man or woman with romance, gives them so rich a store of it as shall last them, life through, unto the end. In sickness or health, in poverty or riches, through middle age and old age, through loss of hair and loss of teeth, under wrinkled face and gouty limbs, under crow’s-feet and double chins, under all the least romantic and most sordid malaisances of life, romance endures to the end. Its price is altogether above rubies; it can never be taken away from those that have it, and those that have it not, can never acquire it for money, nor by the most utter toil—no, nor ever arrive at the very faintest comprehension of it.

Over the years I have read many, many books about the future, my ‘we’re all doomed’ books, as Connie liked to call them. ‘All the books you read are either about how grim the past was or how gruesome the future will be. It might not be that way, Douglas. Things might turn out all right.’ But these were well-researched, plausible studies, their conclusions highly persuasive, and I could become quite voluble on the subject. Take, for instance, the fate of the middle-class, into which Albie and I were born and to which Connie now belongs, albeit with some protest. In book after book I read that the middle-class are doomed. Globalisation and technology have already cut a swathe through previously secure professions, and 3D printing technology will soon wipe out the last of the manufacturing industries. The internet won’t replace those jobs, and what place for the middle-classes if twelve people can run a giant corporation? I’m no communist firebrand, but even the most rabid free-marketeer would concede that market-forces capitalism, instead of spreading wealth and security throughout the population, has grotesquely magnified the gulf between rich and poor, forcing a global workforce into dangerous, unregulated, insecure low-paid labour while rewarding only a tiny elite of businessmen and technocrats. So-called ‘secure’ professions seem less and less so; first it was the miners and the ship- and steel-workers, soon it will be the bank clerks, the librarians, the teachers, the shop-owners, the supermarket check-out staff. The scientists might survive if it’s the right type of science, but where do all the taxi-drivers in the world go when the taxis drive themselves? How do they feed their children or heat their homes and what happens when frustration turns to anger? Throw in terrorism, the seemingly insoluble problem of religious fundamentalism, the rise of the extreme right-wing, under-employed youth and the under-pensioned elderly, fragile and corrupt banking systems, the inadequacy of the health and care systems to cope with vast numbers of the sick and old, the environmental repercussions of unprecedented factory-farming, the battle for finite resources of food, water, gas and oil, the changing course of the Gulf Stream, destruction of the biosphere and the statistical probability of a global pandemic, and there really is no reason why anyone should sleep soundly ever again. By the time Albie is my age I will be long gone, or, best-case scenario, barricaded into my living module with enough rations to see out my days. But outside, I imagine vast, unregulated factories where workers count themselves lucky to toil through eighteen-hour days for less than a living wage before pulling on their gas masks to fight their way through the unemployed masses who are bartering with the mutated chickens and old tin-cans that they use for currency, those lucky workers returning to tiny, overcrowded shacks in a vast megalopolis where a tree is never seen, the air is thick with police drones, where car-bomb explosions, typhoons and freak hailstorms are so commonplace as to barely be remarked upon. Meanwhile, in literally gilded towers miles above the carcinogenic smog, the privileged 1 per cent of businessmen, celebrities and entrepreneurs look down through bullet-proof windows, accept cocktails in strange glasses from the robot waiters hovering nearby and laugh their tinkling laughs and somewhere, down there in that hellish, stewing mess of violence, poverty and desperation, is my son, Albie Petersen, a wandering minstrel with his guitar and his keen interest in photography, still refusing to wear a decent coat.

People who are starving and dressed in rags don’t want to hear someone read a list of propositional “good news.” They want to see the good news in action. The church doesn’t hold revival meetings and call it a day — we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, dig wells, and staff medical clinics. Social action isn’t an optional part of evangelism; it is evangelism. This is an important correction to the overspirituality that dominated evangelical Christianity just a generation ago. But the both/and of holistic mission still misses the heart of Jesus if we don’t see that the church needs the poor as much as the poor need the church. Jesus didn’t embrace the poor only because he pitied them or because he knew he had the resources to help them. Jesus embraced the poor because they were rushing into the kingdom ahead of the scribes and Pharisees — those who called themselves God’s people. Jesus welcomed people who knew poverty because they were ready to receive what he had to offer. Religious people, he said, could learn something from them. Our spiritual lives are linked to the material conditions of our life. When we feel like we don’t need much materially, we often have trouble remembering why we need God. We comfortable Americans can go through an entire day without thinking of God. But Jesus gave the poor more than food to eat and relief from their sickness. He restored them to God’s beloved community.

Just as sick people need surgery and cautery to recover the health they have lost, so we need trials, and toils of repentance, and fear of death and punishment, so that we may regain our former health of soul and shake off the sickness which our folly has induced. The more the Physician of our souls bestows upon us voluntary and involuntary suffering, the more we should thank Him for His compassion and accept the suffering joyfully: For it is to help us that He increases our tribulation, both through the sufferings we willingly embrace in our repentance and through the trials and punishments not subject to our will. In this way, if we voluntarily accept affliction, we will be freed from our sickness and from the punishments to come, and perhaps even from present punishments as well.

TRIBUTE TO A DOG The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog. A man’s dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master’s side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer; he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounter with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wing and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens. —SENATOR GEORGE VEST, 1870

The heartwood," Rob murmured, looking at me. "You wanted to marry me in the heart of Major Oak." I beamed at him grateful that he understood. "And Scar," he whispered. I leaned in close. "Are you wearing knives to our wedding?" Nodding, I laughed, telling him, "I was going to get you here one way or another, Hood." He laughed, a bright, merry sound. Standing in the heart of the tree, he reached again for my hand, fingers sliding over mine. Touching his hand, a rope of lightening lashed round my fingers, like it seared us together. Now, and for always. His fingers moved on mine, rubbing over my hand before capturing it tight and turning me to the priest. The priest looked over his shoulder, watching as the sun began to dip. He led us in prayer, he asked me to speak the same words I'd spoken not long past to Gisbourne, but that whole thing felt like a bad dream, like I were waking and it were fading and gone for good. "Lady Scarlet." he asked me with a smile, "known to some as Lady Marian of Huntingdon, will thou have this lord to thy wedded husband, will thou love him and honour him, keep him and obey him, in health and in sickness, as a wife should a husband, forsaking all others on account of him, so long as ye both shall live?" I looked at Robin, tears burning in my eyes. "I will," I promised. "I will, always." Rob's face were beaming back at me, his ocean eyes shimmering bright. The priest smiled. "Robin of Locksley, will thou have this lady to thy wedded wife, will thou love her and honor her, keep her and guard her, in health and in sickness, as a husband should a wife, forsaking all others on account of her, so long as ye both shall live?" the priest asked. "Yes," Rob said. "I will." "You have the rings?" the priest asked Rob. "I do," I told the priest, taking two rings from where Bess had tied them to my dress. I'd sent Godfrey out to buy them at market without Rob knowing. "I knew you weren't planning on this," I told him. Rob just grinned like a fool at me, taking the ring I handed him to put on my finger. Laughs bubbled up inside of me, and I felt like I were smiling so wide something were stuck in my cheeks and holding me open. More shy and proud than I thought I'd be, I said. "I take you as me wedded husband, Robin. And thereto I plight my troth." I pushed the ring onto his finger. He took my half hand in one of his, but the other- holding the ring- went into his pocket. "I may not have known I would marry you today Scar," he said. "But I did know I would marry you." He showed me a ring, a large ruby set in delicate gold. "This," he said to me, "was my mother's. It's the last thing I have of hers, and when I met you and loved you and realized your name was the exact colour of the stone- " He swallowed, and cleared his throat, looking at me with the blue eyes that shot right through me. "This was meant to be Scarlet. I was always meant to love you. To marry you." The priest coughed. "Say the words, my son, and you will marry her." Rob grinned and I laughed, and Rob stepped closer, cradling my hand. "I take you as my wedded wife, Scarlet. And thereto I plight my troth." He slipped the ring on my finger and it fit. "Receive the Holy Spirit," the priest said, and kissed Robin on the cheek. Rob's happy grin turned a touch wolflike as he turned back to me, hauling me against him and angling his mouth over mine. I wrapped my arms around him and my head spun- I couldn't tell if we were spinning, if I were dizzy, if my feet were on the ground anymore at all, but all I knew, all I cared for, were him, his mouth against mine, and letting the moment we became man and wife spin into eternity.

Samuel had strengthened the blood-tie between them, but no more than this. They would cherish each other in sickness and in health, walk through life sharing its pleasures and its sorrows, sleep side by side at night in the little room above the porch, grow old and frail, resting at last, not parted, in Lanoc Churchyard—but from the beginning to the end they would have no knowledge of one another. Janet’s feeling for Samuel ran parallel to her feeling for Thomas. The one was her husband, the other was her child. Samuel depended on her for care and for comfort until he should grow old enough to look after himself. She washed him and dressed him, seated him beside her in his high chair at table and fed him, helped him with his first steps and his first words, gave him all the tenderness and the affection he demanded from her. She gave to both Thomas and Samuel her natural spontaneity of feeling and a great simplicity of heart; but the spirit of Janet was free and unfettered, waiting to rise from its self-enforced seclusion to mingle with intangible things, like the wind, the sea, and the skies, hand in hand with the one for whom she waited. Then she, too, would become part of these things forever, abstract and immortal. Because

A PRAYER TO SAINT DYMPHNA Good Saint Dymphna, great wonder-worker in every affliction of mind and body, I humbly implore thy powerful intercession with Jesus through Mary, Health of the Sick, in my present need. (Mention it.) Saint Dymphna, martyr of purity, patroness of those who suffer with nervous and mental afflictions, beloved child of Jesus and Mary, pray to Them for me and obtain my request. Saint Dymphna, pray for us. Saint Gerebran, pray for us.

He tells me about human weddings, held inside or outside if the weather is mild. The couple wear clothes that are painfully uncomfortable and make their friends do the same. An officiant says a few words that neither party has really thought through—sickness and health, richer and poorer, better and worse—or at least don’t believe will be put to the test. Family and friends toast the couple, eat a little, drink too much, give vases, dance badly, and then run for the exits.

I promise to be your lover, your companion in life, your ally in conflict, and your partner in adventure. I will strive every day to be worthy of your love. I will be honest with you, kind, patient, and forgiving. I will love you, hold you, honor and respect you, in sickness and in health, through loss and victory, for all the days of my life. I promise to help shoulder our challenges, for there is nothing we cannot face—and nothing we cannot do—if we stand together. These are my sacred vows to you as I join my life to yours.” Justinius

. . . PTSD, and other illness terms as well, have become a way of claiming a right to legitimate pain and misfortune. It is as if, without the illness label, their anguish wouldn't be valid, and they wouldn't be granted a passport to what Susan Sontag once called citizenship in 'the kingdom of the sick.' [However, it is] only some realms in that kingdom [that] offer a refuge from the stigma of mental illnesses: the diseases that come to us from the outside, apparently through no fault of our own, like PTSD and the enigmatic Gulf War syndrome (GWS).

Most women seek some kind of emotional connection or emotional involvement with a man before consenting to sex. From an evolutionary perspective, this is emotional wisdom women have inherited from their successful maternal ancestors. A man’s emotional involvement, particularly his genuine love, provides a powerful signal that he will stick with her through thick and thin, through health and sickness. Love provides the best chance that he will devote his commitment, provisions, and protection to one woman and her children. Men not in love feel freer to flit from woman to woman.

Take from me, O Lord, that self-pity which love of myself so readily produces, and from the frustration of not succeeding in the world as I would naturally desire, for these have no regard for your glory. Rather, create in me a sorrow that is conformable to your own. Let my pains rather express the happy condition of my conversion and salvation. Let me no longer wish for health or life, but to spend it and end it for you, with you, and in you. I pray neither for health nor sickness, life nor death. Rather I pray that you will dispose of my health, my sickness, my life, and my death, as for your glory, for my salvation, for the usefulness to your church and your saints, among whom I hope to be numbered. You alone know what is expedient for me. You are the Sovereign Master. Do whatever pleases you. Give me or take away from me. Conform my will to yours, and grant that with a humble and perfect submission, and in holy confidence, I may dispose myself utterly to you. May I receive the orders of your everlasting, provident care. May I equally adore whatever proceeds from you. (The Mind on Fire, An Anthology of the Writings of Blaise Pascal, Multnomah Press, 1989, p. 291)

I’m familiar with “covenant” – that’s what marriage vows are. I can catch the implications of the eucharistic covenant if I picture God speaking vows to me: “I, God, take you, [your name], to be my own, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse [this includes sin], for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health . . . and when you die, my Son will walk with you through death and bring you safely home, to peace and joy and life . . . forever.” Remember. A covenant involves both parties. We have to speak our part. “I, [your name], take you, God, to be my own . .

We walk around inside that house like everything is okay, but it’s not, Quinn. We’ve been broken for years and I have no idea how to fix us. I find solutions. It’s what I do. It’s what I’m good at. But I have no idea how to solve me and you. Every day I come home, hoping things will be better. But you can’t even stand to be in the same room with me. You hate it when I touch you. You hate it when I talk to you. I pretend not to notice the things you don’t want me to notice because I don’t want you to hurt more than you already do.” He releases a rush of air. “I am not blaming you for what I did. It’s my fault. I did that. I fucked up. But I didn’t fuck up because I was attracted to her. I fucked up because I miss you. Every day, I miss you. When I’m at work, I miss you. When I’m home, I miss you. When you’re next to me in bed, I miss you. When I’m inside you, I miss you.” Graham presses his mouth to mine. I can taste his tears. Or maybe they’re my tears. He pulls back and presses his forehead to mine. “I miss you, Quinn. So much. You’re right here, but you aren’t. I don’t know where you went or when you left, but I have no idea how to bring you back. I am so alone. We live together. We eat together. We sleep together. But I have never felt more alone in my entire life.” Graham releases me and falls back against his seat. He rests his elbow against the window, covering his face as he tries to compose himself. He’s more broken than I’ve ever seen him in all the years I’ve known him. And I’m the one slowly tearing him down. I’m making him unrecognizable. I’ve strung him along by allowing him to believe there’s hope that I’ll eventually change. That I’ll miraculously turn back into the woman he fell in love with. But I can’t change. We are who our circumstances turn us into. “Graham.” I wipe at my face with my shirt. He’s quiet, but he eventually looks at me with his sad, heartbroken eyes. “I haven’t gone anywhere. I’ve been here this whole time. But you can’t see me because you’re still searching for someone I used to be. I’m sorry I’m no longer who I was back then. Maybe I’ll get better. Maybe I won’t. But a good husband loves his wife through the good and the bad times. A good husband stands at his wife’s side through sickness and health, Graham. A good husband- a husband who truly loves his wife - wouldn’t cheat on her and then blame his infidelity on the fact that he’s lonely.” Graham’s expression doesn’t change. He’s as still as a statue. The only thing that moves is his jaw as he works it back and forth. And then his eyes narrow and he tilts his head. “You don’t think I love you, Quinn?” “I know you used to. But I don’t think you love the person I’ve become.” Graham sits up straight. He leans forward, looking me hard in the eye. His words are clipped as he speaks. “I have loved you every single second of every day since the moment I laid eyes on you. I love you more now than I did the day I married you. I love you, Quinn. I fucking love you!” He opens his car door, gets out and then slams it shut with all his strength. The whole car shakes. He walks toward the house, but before he makes it to the front door, he spins around and points at me angrily. “I love you, Quinn!” He’s shouting the words. He’s angry. So angry. He walks toward his car and kicks at the front bumper with his bare foot. He kicks and he kicks and he kicks and then pauses to scream it at me again. “I love you!” He slams his fist against the top of his car, over and over, until he finally collapses against the hood, his head buried in his arms. He remains in this position for an entire minute, the only thing moving is the subtle shaking of his shoulders. I don’t move. I don’t even think I breathe. Graham finally pushes off the hood and uses his shirt to wipe at his eyes. He looks at me, completely defeated. “I love you,” he says quietly, shaking his head. “I always have. No matter how much you wish I didn’t.

Downstairs in the body, sleep restocks the armory of our immune system, helping fight malignancy, preventing infection, and warding off all manner of sickness. Sleep reforms the body’s metabolic state by fine-tuning the balance of insulin and circulating glucose. Sleep further regulates our appetite, helping control body weight through healthy food selection rather than rash impulsivity. Plentiful sleep maintains a flourishing microbiome within your gut from which we know so much of our nutritional health begins. Adequate sleep is intimately tied to the fitness of our cardiovascular system, lowering blood pressure while keeping our hearts in fine condition.

The church is the church as a creature of God’s Word—a creature that finds its life outside of itself, that does not have faith in faith so much as faith in the God of covenant promise made known in Christ. From one standpoint, the church is a gathering of sinners who are both old and young, healthy and sick, growing and dying. But, by God’s promise, the church is also people who move through birth, health, dying, and even death on a journey to resurrection because they belong to Jesus Christ. For the end of the story of God, and of the church, is not death but resurrection. “Christ has been raised from the dead,” and the defeat of death in resurrection comes through him and then to those who belong to him. “Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ” (1 Cor. 15:20, 23).

TRIBUTE TO A DOG The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog. A man’s dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master’s side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer; he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounter with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wing and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens. —Senator George Vest, 1870

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in. I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions. I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons. They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut. Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in. The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble, They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps, Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another, So it is impossible to tell how many there are. My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently. They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep. Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage—— My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox, My husband and child smiling out of the family photo; Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks. I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat stubbornly hanging on to my name and address. They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations. Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head. I am a nun now, I have never been so pure. I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free—— The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet. The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me. Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby. Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds. They are subtle : they seem to float, though they weigh me down, Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color, A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck. Nobody watched me before, now I am watched. The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins, And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips, And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself. The vivid tulips eat my oxygen. Before they came the air was calm enough, Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss. Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise. Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine. They concentrate my attention, that was happy Playing and resting without committing itself. The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves. The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals; They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat, And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me. The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea, And comes from a country far away as health. --"Tulips", written 18 March 1961

Student indebtedness expemplifies neoliberalismś strategy since the 1970s: the substitution of social rights (the right to education, health care, retirement, etc.) for access to credit, in other words, for the right to contract debt. No more pooling of pensions, instead individual investment in pension funds; no pay rises, instead consumer credit; no universal insurance, individual insurance; no right to housing, home loans. The individualization process established through social policies has brought about radical changes in the welfare state. Education spending, left entirely to students, frees up resources which the state quickly transfers to corporations and the wealthiest households, notably through lower taxes. The true welfare recipients are no longer the poor, the unemployed, the sick, unmarried women, and so on, but corporations and rich.

Anastasia:I give you my solemn vow to be your faithful partner in sickness and in health, to stand by your side in good times and in bad, to share your joy as well as your sorrow, I promise to love you unconditionally, to support you in your goals and dreams, to honor and respect you, to laugh with you and cry with you, to share my hopes and dreams with you, and bring you solace in times of need. And to cherish you for as long as we both shall live. Christian: I solemnly vow that I will safeguard and hold dear and deep in my heart our union and you, I promise to love you faithfully, forsaking all others, through the good times and the bad, in sickness or in health, regardless of where life takes us. I will protect you, trust you, and respect you. I will share your joys and sorrows and comfort you in times of need. I promise to cherish you and uphold your hopes and dreams and keep you safe at my side. All that is mine is now yours. I give you my hand, my heart, and my love from this moment on for as long as we both shall live.

He did not want to die like a sick man. He did not want his sickness to be what it is so often, an attenuation, a transition to death. What he really wanted was the encounter between his life - a life filled with blood and health - and death. He stood, dragged a chair over to the window and sat down in it, huddling in his blankets. Through the thin curtains, in the places where the material did not fall in folds, he saw the stars. He breathed heavily for a long time, and gripped the arms of his chair to control his trembling hands. He would reconquer his lucidity if he could. "It could be done, " he was thinking. And he was thinking, too, that the gas was still on in the kitchen. "It could be done," he thought again. Lucidity too was a long patience. Everything could be won, earned, acquired. He struck his fist on the arm of the chair. A man is not born strong, weak, or decisive. He becomes strong, he becomes lucid. Fate is not in man but around him. Then he realized he was crying. A strange weakness, a kind of cowardice born of his sickness gave way to tears, to childishness.

When I go running through the forest on hot days, if I stop for any reason, in that very moment mosquitoes will attack me. If I keep moving, they do not bother me. This motivates me to continue without resting. Imagine how wonderful it would be if every time we stopped being active in life the Universe would send us a signal that would push us to carry on. Guess what, it does. When the life we lead does not align with our passions, depression bites at us so we will change our ways. If we eat poorly and live sedentary, we are often afflicted with a serious health condition. We do not get sick, or become ill so that we can blame God, curse our genetics, or give up on life. These conditions arise to motivate us so we will correct our errors and clean up our mistakes. The reason why we are confronted with failures on our mission to obtain happiness is not so we can dwell in misery, but rather for us to reshape our desires and go after what we are destined to succeed with. The Universe is working in our favor, not against us. It is okay to rest at times, but if we do not want to get bit by misfortunes, then we must remain active in our pursuit of a better life.

The heart, it still beats stoically in my ribcage, but it knows its time is up. Strange how the repository of one’s existence is one’s heart, when all the heart does is pump the blood through the body. Not the soul that puts the life force into the body. The soul is intangible, it floats beyond oneself. It returns, pulled back by threads of loves, old and new, of the lives connected with one, of the belief that no, it isn’t time yet. The heart would beat on until the moment it decided it had done quite enough beating for a lifetime. A miracle organ, the heart, constantly beating through sickness, through health, through wakefulness, through sleep, through sorrow so terrible you think it would stop then and there, and through joy so intense you wish it would stop right then to freeze that moment forever. It beats on, regardless. And when it finally does stop, so does the body. Switched off, like a machine, the engine that powered it shuddering to a halt. The life force swirling away into the ethers, wherever it was that life forces went after the body had perished. Right now I am alive. The heart is beating, the soul is still restless, the feeling that there is more to come niggles. What more though, I don’t know.

This Compost" Something startles me where I thought I was safest, I withdraw from the still woods I loved, I will not go now on the pastures to walk, I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea, I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other flesh to renew me. O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken? How can you be alive you growths of spring? How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain? Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses within you? Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead? Where have you disposed of their carcasses? Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations? Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat? I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps I am deceiv'd, I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my spade through the sod and turn it up underneath, I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat. 2 Behold this compost! behold it well! Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person—yet behold! The grass of spring covers the prairies, The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden, The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward, The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches, The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves, The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree, The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on their nests, The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs, The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the colt from the mare, Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark green leaves, Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in the dooryards, The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead. What chemistry! That the winds are really not infectious, That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which is so amorous after me, That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues, That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it, That all is clean forever and forever, That the cool drink from the well tastes so good, That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy, That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me, That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease, Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease. Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient, It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions, It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas'd corpses, It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor, It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops, It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last.

There is an implication to be found in the statement of Surgeon Verneuil, though probably not meant by him, to which assent must be given when understood. It is TRUE that there is no such THING as tetanus, small pox. syphilis, etc., as is implied by the general use of nosological terms. Disease is not a thing, an entity: it is a condition, and the error of regarding the condition of disease as an entity has confirmed, where it has not originated, much of the prevailing erroneous treatment of the sick. Nosological terms have a use; it is that of bringing to the mind of the physician a group of pathological symptoms, which may or may not be present in the case of the patient under consideration; from them, *when present*, the diseased condition of the patient can be recognized and treated. Unfortunately, through not understanding this truth, attempts are frequently made to treat, *not the patient*, but the name, which has been given to a collection of morbid symptoms. A broken limb is a thing; the inflammation which results from it is a condition, and if gangrene ensues the *gangrene* is not a *thing*, but a condition to be taken into consideration with all the other symptoms in the treatment of the patient. The surgeon, Verneuil, had probably a glimmering perception of this truth, but he misapplied it, for his theory and practice, as a physician, and the theory and practice of nearly all modern medicine assume that the condition to be treated is a thing having a name and this name is treated instead of the patient. –Source: *The Blood and its Third Anatomical Element* by Antoine Béchamp, 1912, Translated by Montague R. Leverson

The definition of morality; Morality is the idiosyncrasy of decadents, actuated by a desire to avenge themselves with success upon life. I attach great value to this definition. 8 [Pg 141] Have you understood me? I have not uttered a single word which I had not already said five years ago through my mouthpiece Zarathustra. The unmasking of Christian morality is an event which unequalled in history, it is a real catastrophe. The man who throws light upon it is a force majeure, a fatality; he breaks the history of man into two. Time is reckoned up before him and after him. The lightning flash of truth struck precisely that which theretofore had stood highest: he who understands what was destroyed by that flash should look to see whether he still holds anything in his hands. Everything which until then was called truth, has been revealed as the most detrimental, most spiteful, and most subterranean form of life; the holy pretext, which was the "improvement" of man, has been recognised as a ruse for draining life of its energy and of its blood. Morality conceived as Vampirism.... The man who unmasks morality has also unmasked the worthlessness of the values in which men either believe or have believed; he no longer sees anything to be revered in the most venerable man—even in the types of men that have been pronounced holy; all he can see in them is the most fatal kind of abortions, fatal, because they fascinate. The concept "God" was invented as the opposite of the concept life—everything detrimental, poisonous, and slanderous, and all deadly hostility to life, wad bound together in one horrible unit in Him. The concepts "beyond" and "true world" were invented in order to depreciate the only world that exists—in order that no goal or aim, no sense or task, might be left to earthly reality. The concepts "soul," "spirit," and last of all the concept "immortal soul," were invented in order to throw contempt on the body, in order to make it sick and "holy," in order to cultivate an attitude of appalling levity towards all things in life which deserve to be treated seriously, i.e. the questions of nutrition and habitation, of intellectual diet, the treatment of the sick, cleanliness, and weather. Instead of health, we find the "salvation of the soul"—that is to say, a folie circulate fluctuating between convulsions and penitence and the hysteria of redemption. The concept "sin," together with the torture instrument appertaining to it, which is the concept "free will," was invented in order to confuse and muddle our instincts, and to render the mistrust of them man's second nature! In the concepts "disinterestedness" and "self-denial," the actual signs of decadence are to be found. The allurement of that which is [Pg 142] [Pg 143] The Project Gutenberg eBook of Ecce Homo, by Friedrich Nietzsche. detrimental, the inability to discover one's own advantage and self-destruction, are made into absolute qualities, into the "duty," the "holiness," and the "divinity" of man. Finally—to keep the worst to the last—by the notion of the good man, all that is favoured which is weak, ill, botched, and sick-in-itself, which ought to be wiped out. The law of selection is thwarted, an ideal is made out of opposition to the proud, well-constituted man, to him who says yea to life, to him who is certain of the future, and who guarantees the future—this man is henceforth called the evil one. And all this was believed in as morality!

To the infra-human specimens of this benighted scientific age the ritual and worship connected with the art of healing as practiced at Epidaurus seems like sheer buncombe. In our world the blind lead the blind and the sick go to the sick to be cured. We are making constant progress, but it is a progress which leads to the operating table, to the poor house, to the insane asylum, to the trenches. We have no healers – we have only butchers whose knowledge of anatomy entitles them to a diploma, which in turn entitles them to carve out or amputate our illnesses so that we may carry on in cripple fashion until such time as we are fit for the slaughterhouse. We announce the discovery of this cure and that but make no mention of the new diseases which we have created en route. The medical cult operates very much like the war office – the triumphs which they broadcast are sops thrown out to conceal death and disaster. The medicos, like the military authorities, are helpless; they are waging a hopeless fight from the start. What man wants is peace in order that he may live. Defeating our neighbor doesn’t give peace any more than curing cancer brings health. Man doesn’t begin to live through triumphing over his enemy nor does he begin to acquire health through endless cures. The joy of life comes through peace, which is not static but dynamic. No man can really say that he knows what joy is until he has experienced peace. And without joy there is no life, even if you have a dozen cars, six butlers, a castle, a private chapel and a bomb-proof vault. Our diseases are our attachments, be they habits, ideologies, ideals, principles, possessions, phobias, gods, cults, religions, what you please. Good wages can be a disease just as much as bad wages. Leisure can be just as great a disease as work. Whatever we cling to, even if it be hope or faith, can be the disease which carries us off. Surrender is absolute: if you cling to even the tiniest crumb you nourish the germ which will devour you. As for clinging to God, God long ago abandoned us in order that we might realize the joy of attaining godhood through our own efforts. All this whimpering that is going on in the dark, this insistent, piteous plea for peace which will grow bigger as the pain and the misery increase, where is it to be found? Peace, do people imagine that it is something to cornered, like corn or wheat? Is it something which can be pounded upon and devoured, as with wolves fighting over a carcass? I hear people talking about peace and their faces are clouded with anger or with hatred or with scorn and disdain, with pride and arrogance. There are people who want to fight to bring about peace- the most deluded souls of all. There will be no peace until murder is eliminated from the heart and mind. Murder is the apex of the broad pyramid whose base is the self. That which stands will have to fall. Everything which man has fought for will have to be relinquished before he can begin to live as man. Up till now he has been a sick beast and even his divinity stinks. He is master of many worlds and in his own he is a slave. What rules the world is the heart, not the brain, in every realm our conquests bring only death. We have turned our backs on the one realm wherein freedom lies. At Epidaurus, in the stillness, in the great peace that came over me, I heard the heart of the world beat. I know what the cure is: it is to give up, to relinquish, to surrender, so that our little hearts may beat in unison with the great heart of the world.

Dearly beloved: We have come together in the presence of God to witness and bless the joining together of this man and this woman in Holy Matrimony. The bond and covenant of marriage was established by God in creation, and our Lord Jesus Christ adorned this manner of life by his presence and first miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. It signifies to us the mystery of the union between Christ and his Church, and Holy Scripture commends it to be honored among all people. The union of husband and wife in heart, body, and mind is intended by God for their mutual joy; for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity; and, when it is God’s will, for the procreation of children and their nurture in the knowledge and love of the Lord. Therefore marriage is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, deliberately, and in accordance with the purposes for which it was instituted by God. I glanced at Marlboro Man, who was listening intently, taking in every word. I held his bicep in my hand, squeezing it lightly and trying to listen to Father Johnson despite the distraction of Marlboro Man’s work-honed muscles. Everything else was a blur: iron candlesticks attached to the end of each pew…my mother’s olive green silk jacket with the mandarin collar…Mike’s tuxedo…Mike’s bald head… Will you have this man to be your husband; to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will you love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, be faithful to him as long as you both shall live? “I will.” I breathed in. The scent of roses…the evening light coming through the stained-glass window. Will you have this woman to be your wife; to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, be faithful to her as long as you both shall live? “I will.” That voice. The voice from all the phone calls. I was marrying that voice. I couldn’t believe it.

Will you have this man to be your husband; to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will you love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, be faithful to him as long as you both shall live? “I will.” I breathed in. The scent of roses…the evening light coming through the stained-glass window. Will you have this woman to be your wife; to live together in the covenant of marriage? Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, be faithful to her as long as you both shall live? “I will.” That voice. The voice from all the phone calls. I was marrying that voice. I couldn’t believe it. We faced each other, our hands intertwined. In the Name of God, I take you to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow. He stood before me, his face serious. My heart leaped in my chest. Then I spoke the words myself. In the Name of God, I take you to be my husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow. Marlboro Man watched me as I spoke, and he listened. My voice broke; emotion moved in. It was a beautiful moment--the most beautiful moment since we’d met. Bless, O Lord, these rings to be a sign of the vows by which this man and this woman have bound themselves to each other. We kneeled, and Father Johnson administered the blessing. Most Gracious God…Let their love for each other be a seal upon their hearts, a mantle about their shoulders, and a crown upon their foreheads…Bless them in their work and in their companionship; in their sleeping and in their waking; in their joys and in their sorrows; in their life and in their death…Send therefore your blessing upon these your servants, that they may so love, honor, and cherish each other in faithfulness and patience, in wisdom and true godliness, that their home may be a haven of blessing and peace. My heart pounded in my chest. This was real, it was not a dream. His hand held mine. I now pronounce you husband and wife.

Give us an idea of…” Noya Baram rubs her temples. “Oh, well.” Augie begins to stroll around again. “The examples are limitless. Small examples: elevators stop working. Grocery-store scanners. Train and bus passes. Televisions. Phones. Radios. Traffic lights. Credit-card scanners. Home alarm systems. Laptop computers will lose all their software, all files, everything erased. Your computer will be nothing but a keyboard and a blank screen. “Electricity would be severely compromised. Which means refrigerators. In some cases, heat. Water—well, we have already seen the effect on water-purification plants. Clean water in America will quickly become a scarcity. “That means health problems on a massive scale. Who will care for the sick? Hospitals? Will they have the necessary resources to treat you? Surgical operations these days are highly computerized. And they will not have access to any of your prior medical records online. “For that matter, will they treat you at all? Do you have health insurance? Says who? A card in your pocket? They won’t be able to look you up and confirm it. Nor will they be able to seek reimbursement from the insurer. And even if they could get in contact with the insurance company, the insurance company won’t know whether you’re its customer. Does it have handwritten lists of its policyholders? No. It’s all on computers. Computers that have been erased. Will the hospitals work for free? “No websites, of course. No e-commerce. Conveyor belts. Sophisticated machinery inside manufacturing plants. Payroll records. “Planes will be grounded. Even trains may not operate in most places. Cars, at least any built since, oh, 2010 or so, will be affected. “Legal records. Welfare records. Law enforcement databases. The ability of local police to identify criminals, to coordinate with other states and the federal government through databases—no more. “Bank records. You think you have ten thousand dollars in your savings account? Fifty thousand dollars in a retirement account? You think you have a pension that allows you to receive a fixed payment every month?” He shakes his head. “Not if computer files and their backups are erased. Do banks have a large wad of cash, wrapped in a rubber band with your name on it, sitting in a vault somewhere? Of course not. It’s all data.” “Mother of God,” says Chancellor Richter, wiping his face with a handkerchief.

Covenant More Than Just Healing, When Sick This Covenant does not simply mean that when we are sick and dying, the Lord will come and heal us. That is a small portion of the Covenant of Healing. The Covenant has three great principles involved. The first is DIVINE HEALING. The second is a bigger thing than Divine Healing; it is DIVINE HEALTH. If God keeps your family or your city or your nation in Divine Health there is no need for Divine Healing. The third is DIVINE LIFE. Divine Life is greater than Divine Health. Divine Life is that union of the soul with God by which the recipient becomes the partaker of His life. The Unholy Brotherhood Now are involved the three underlying principles that unfold the whole subject of healing. They are Sin, Sickness and Death, an unholy brotherhood, the representatives of the Kingdom of Darkness. They are the children of the Devil and Disobedience. If you want to look for their parentage, Satan is their father and Disobedience is their mother, and out of this union, Sin, Sickness and Death are born. All three are specifically declared by the Word of God to be the enemies of God. God hates sin, and God equally hates sickness, for sickness is incipient death. The final result of the Redemption of Jesus is the destruction of these three enemies of God, this triumvirate of darkness! All the Christian world is clear on this point, that Jesus Christ came to redeem the world from sin. They may dispute His methods but on general principles they believe that Jesus Christ is the Redeemer from sin. The Christian world is not so well agreed that He is the Redeemer from sickness. The Church was agreed on that question at one time. In the early centuries of the Church’s history there was no other method of healing known among Christians, except healing through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. John Wesley says, in his notes on the New Testament, under James 5: 14-16: “The only system of physics known in the early church for four hundred years was the prayer of faith for the sick.” The early Christians had a Remedy, bless God, but it was an eternal one, the living eternal Spirit of Christ in the world, and in their heart, and in their person, when they needed Him for healing. God’s Remedy is a Person, not a material remedy. It is not an “it” but a “Him.” Beloved, receive this Spirit of God into your heart, into your life, into your being.

The biology of potential illness arises early in life. The brain’s stress-response mechanisms are programmed by experiences beginning in infancy, and so are the implicit, unconscious memories that govern our attitudes and behaviours toward ourselves, others and the world. Cancer, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and the other conditions we examined are not abrupt new developments in adult life, but culminations of lifelong processes. The human interactions and biological imprinting that shaped these processes took place in periods of our life for which we may have no conscious recall. Emotionally unsatisfying child-parent interaction is a theme running through the one hundred or so detailed interviews I conducted for this book. These patients suffer from a broadly disparate range of illnesses, but the common threads in their stories are early loss or early relationships that were profoundly unfulfilling emotionally. Early childhood emotional deprivation in the histories of adults with serious illness is also verified by an impressive number of investigations reported in the medical and psychological literature. In an Italian study, women with genital cancers were reported to have felt less close to their parents than healthy controls. They were also less demonstrative emotionally. A large European study compared 357 cancer patients with 330 controls. The women with cancer were much less likely than controls to recall their childhood homes with positive feelings. As many as 40 per cent of cancer patients had suffered the death of a parent before the age of seventeen—a ratio of parental loss two and a half times as great as had been suffered by the controls. The thirty-year follow-up of Johns Hopkins medical students was previously quoted. Those graduates whose initial interviews in medical school had revealed lower than normal childhood closeness with their parents were particularly at risk. By midlife they were more likely to commit suicide or develop mental illness, or to suffer from high blood pressure, coronary heart disease or cancer. In a similar study, Harvard undergraduates were interviewed about their perception of parental caring. Thirty-five years later these subjects’ health status was reviewed. By midlife only a quarter of the students who had reported highly positive perceptions of parental caring were sick. By comparison, almost 90 per cent of those who regarded their parental emotional nurturing negatively were ill. “Simple and straightforward ratings of feelings of being loved are significantly related to health status,” the researchers concluded.

The chivalric-aristocratic value judgments are based on a powerful physicality, a blossoming, rich, even effervescent good health that includes the things needed to maintain it, war, adventure, hunting, dancing, jousting and everything else that contains strong, free, happy action. The priestly-aristocratic method of valuation — as we have seen — has different criteria: woe betide it when it comes to war! As we know, priests make the most evil enemies — but why? Because they are the most powerless. Out of this powerlessness, their hate swells into something huge and uncanny to a most intellectual and poisonous level. The greatest haters in world history, and the most intelligent [die geistreichsten Hasser], have always been priests: — nobody else’s intelligence [Geist] stands a chance against the intelligence [Geist] of priestly revenge. The history of mankind would be far too stupid a thing if it had not had the intellect [Geist] of the powerless injected into it: — let us take the best example straight away. Nothing that has been done on earth against ‘the noble’, ‘the mighty’, ‘the masters’ and ‘the rulers’, is worth mentioning compared with what the Jews have done against them: the Jews, that priestly people, which in the last resort was able to gain satisfaction from its enemies and conquerors only through a radical revaluation of their values, that is, through an act of the most deliberate revenge [durch einen Akt der geistigsten Rache]. Only this was fitting for a priestly people with the most entrenched priestly vengefulness. It was the Jews who, rejecting the aristocratic value equation (good = noble = powerful = beautiful = happy = blessed) ventured, with awe-inspiring consistency, to bring about a reversal and held it in the teeth of the most unfathomable hatred (the hatred of the powerless), saying: ‘Only those who suffer are good, only the poor, the powerless, the lowly are good; the suffering, the deprived, the sick, the ugly, are the only pious people, the only ones saved, salvation is for them alone, whereas you rich, the noble and powerful, you are eternally wicked, cruel, lustful, insatiate, godless, you will also be eternally wretched, cursed and damned!’ . . . We know who became heir to this Jewish revaluation . . . With regard to the huge and incalculably disastrous initiative taken by the Jews with this most fundamental of all declarations of war, I recall the words I wrote on another occasion (Beyond Good and Evil, section 195) — namely, that the slaves’ revolt in morality begins with the Jews: a revolt which has two thousand years of history behind it and which has only been lost sight of because — it was victorious . . .

Do know what the vows are? Through sickness and health, Richer or Poorer, good times and bad…all that good stuff. When you get married you can’t be running out the door every time your wife pisses you off. It’s about sticking it out and holding it down even when it ain’t so pretty. Marriage is choice you have to wake up and make every day. There’s no running off and ignoring phone calls. It’s about love, trust, understanding, compassion, and most important communication.

To understand how revolutionary Pasteur’s contributions were, consider the previously popular ideas that attempted to explain why people got sick. For nearly two thousand years, the medical profession believed that four different bodily fluids—blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile—dominated the health and moods of people. When they were in harmony, all was right with the world. When they were out of sync, people fell ill or into “bad humor.” The theory was known as humorism. Doctors were never quite certain what caused imbalance among these humors—ideas ranged from seasons to diet to evil spirits. So they experimented by trial and error to restore the necessary harmony of fluids—often with now seemingly barbaric methods such as bloodletting, which at the time was said to remedy hundreds of diseases. Sometimes, people got better. But most of the time, they got worse. And doctors were never sure why. By the nineteenth century, people began to blame disease on “miasmas” or “bad airs” that floated around dangerously. As hare-brained as it sounds today, “miasma theory” was actually an improvement over humorism because it spawned sanitary reforms that had the effect of removing real disease agents—bacteria. For example, in 1854, when cholera gripped London, the miasma explanation inspired massive, state-sponsored clearing of the air by draining cesspools. A physician of the time, John Snow, was able to isolate the pattern of new cholera cases and to conclude that new cases correlated to proximity to a specific water pump on Broad Street. Disease, he concluded, correlated with that pump—and therefore cholera was not transmitted through miasma, but likely through contaminated water. Snow’s work saved countless lives—and he has subsequently been recognized as one of the most important physicians in history. But while an improvement, Snow’s analysis still didn’t get to the root cause of what actually made those people sick.

Our ability to face trials, tribulations, suffering, sickness or disease all rest in the power of God working through us, giving us all we need to get through it. - Hidden Treasures

you view the current status of the human body as a whole, many countries, like the United States, now confront a novel paradox. On the one hand, more wealth and impressive advances in health care, sanitation, and education since the Industrial Revolution have dramatically improved billions of people’s health, especially in developed nations. Children born today are far less likely to die from infectious mismatch diseases caused by the Agricultural Revolution and they are much more likely to live longer, grow taller, and be generally healthier than children born in my grandfather’s generation. As a consequence, the world’s population tripled over the course of the twentieth century. But on the other hand, our bodies face new problems that were barely on anyone’s radar screen a few generations ago. People today are much more likely to get sick from new mismatch diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, and colon cancer, which were either absent or much less common for most of human evolutionary history, including most of the agricultural era. To understand how and why all this happened—and how to address these new problems—requires considering the industrial era through the lens of evolution. How did the Industrial Revolution along with the growth of capitalism, medical science, and public health affect the way our bodies grow and function? In

Dearly beloved... The president’s daughter and Cameron Roberts faced each other, hands lightly clasped, eyes locked. I, Blair Allison Powell, take you, Cameron Reed Roberts, to be my friend, my lover, the mother of my children, and my wife. I will be yours in times of plenty and in times of want, in times of sickness and in times of health, in times of joy and in times of sorrow, in times of failure and in times of triumph. I promise to cherish and respect you, to care for and protect you, to comfort and encourage you, and to stay with you, for all eternity. A willowy blonde stepped to Blair’s side, and Blair lifted a gleaming gold band from her palm. She lifted Cam’s left hand and slid the ring securely on her third nger. With this ring, I thee wed. Cameron Roberts’s gaze never wavered from Blair’s face, her voice ringing strong and clear. I, Cameron Reed Roberts, take you, Blair Allison Powell, to be my friend, my lover, the mother of my children, and my wife. I will be yours in times of plenty and in times of want, in times of sickness and in times of health, in times of joy and in times of sorrow, in times of failure and in times of triumph. I promise to cherish and respect you, to care for and protect you, to comfort and encourage you, and to stay with you, for all eternity. Roberts accepted the matching ring from a young dark-haired woman who leaned on a plain wood cane, and slipped it onto Blair’s nger. With this ring, I thee wed. An anticipatory breath shuddered through the crowd. Six uniformed of cers, the Guard of Honor, stepped in sync to form a path from the proceedings area, facing one another in a line, white-gloved hands on shining saber hilts. By the power vested in me by the United States Army, the President of the United States, and the Commonwealth of... The three male and three female of cers drew their swords with a slick of steel, their blades raised and touching to form the Arch of Sabers. ...I pronounce you wed. The couple kissed, the crowd clapped...

Biomedicine locates sickness in a specific place in an individual body: a headache, a stomachache a torn knee, lung cancer. Medical anthropologists instead locate sickness and health in three interconnected bodies: the political, the social, and the physical. The prevailing political economy impacts the distribution of sickness and health in a society and the means available to heal those who are sick. For example, poor individuals worldwide are more exposed to toxins that make them sick, while the rich stay healthier. The social body constructs the meanings and experiences surrounding particular physical states. It determines the ideal physical body, legitimizing biomedical practices like plastic surgery to attain it. The social body also determines the boundaries of the physical body. Some cultures locate sickness not in individuals but instead in families or communities. As any caregiver knows, we live the sickness too. And while biomedicine can cure diseases it flounders with permanent hurts, troubles of the mind, states present from birth or that are incurable or progressive. In biomedicine, these states are stigmatized and feared. We medical anthropologists have a term for this: social death.

caused their insanity. That is why we can justify housing them in inhumane conditions and punishing rather than treating them. The federal government says mental illness is a chemical imbalance, and because of that it’s a sickness and not something, as Rachel Diaz said, that anyone seeks or wants or deserves to get any more than he seeks, wants, or deserves to get a cold.

MOO: In 2012 a cow named Darcy walked up to a McDonald’s drive-through window and just stood there. Her owner—Sandy Winn of Brush, Colorado—told police that Darcy had walked the half-mile to the McDonald’s because she “just likes attention.” MOO: Why did a cow climb five sets of stairs in an apartment building in Lesogorsk, Russia, in 2012? She was running away from an excited bull that was chasing her through a field. According to reports, the frightened cow “had to be lassoed and virtually dragged to the lobby while mooing in protest.” MOO: In 2011 a two-year-old boy named Tha Sophat got sick while staying at his grandfather’s farm in Thailand. He wouldn’t eat or drink, and his condition worsened…until he began suckling milk straight from the cow’s udder. The cow didn’t seem to mind, and after a month of nursing, Tha was better. “The neighbors say he will be ashamed when he grows up,” the grandpa told Reuters. “But his health is fine. He is strong and he doesn’t have diarrhea.

Health and Sickness (The Sonnet) Health doesn't always come from pills, Health comes through being mindful. Pills just help bring down the barriers, That clutter the body with deadly ghoul. Wellness is not the absence of sickness, It's the capacity to overcome sickness. Some sickness are the norm of nature, Others are products of our own foolishness. The opposite of sickness is not its absence, The opposite of sickness is its awareness. To treat sickness we must first acknowledge it, Sickness acknowledged is sickness half treated. In the end, health favors those who favor humility. Sustainability favors those who favor simplicity.

Myth—God Will Rescue Me Following 40 days of fasting, Jesus was tempted three times by Satan. The second temptation is recorded in the New Testament as follows, “Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.”80 Satan’s temptation was an appeal to man’s desire to be miraculously delivered from the consequences of an action. We tend to seek divine intervention to rescue us from consequences with little or no effort on our part. This tendency was illustrated by Ancient Greek dramatists’ use of the “deus ex machina,” meaning “God from a machine.” This was a machine in which actors portraying the gods would suddenly be lowered on the scene to save the mortal characters from the consequences of their choices. Satan’s use of this temptation continues today and can easily be seen manifested by the student who fails to study and then prays for an “A” during the examination, or the person who violated the divine laws of health and then prays for deliverance from resulting sickness or the person who purchases an expensive plasma screen television and then prays for help to pay the rent. We also see this tendency manifested by those who have incurred larges amounts of debt and then seeks to be delivered from the bondage and obligation of repayment through bankruptcy, or those who seek deliverance from a disease of choice by taking a pill to treat the symptoms instead of changing the behavior that causes the symptoms. We should respond to such temptations as did the Savior by saying, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.”81 We must accept responsibility, which is the willingness and ability to recognize and accept the consequences of our actions

In contrast, something as simple as pre-scheduled workouts acts as scaffolding around which you can more effectively plan and execute your day. This gives you a greater sense of agency and feeling of freedom. Jocko adds, “It also means that if you want freedom in life—be that financial freedom, more free time, or even freedom from sickness and poor health—you can only achieve these things through discipline.

Sickness is real, is true that is, to the patient’s frightened perception. Disorders and problems are more than imagination, they are solid convictions of fear or ignorance and therefore need to be dealt with through an accurate comprehension of the truth of being. If Soul-healing is abused by those who are wise in their own conceit, treatment becomes an irksome trouble maker. Instead of scientifically affecting a cure, a boaster in Science starts petty crossfires over those who are disabled and sick. Humanity should not be knocked around with superficial and heartless remarks like: It’s all in your head. Matter is not real. Be more spiritual. You really are perfect.

Humans break so easily. They break their bones, their bodies, their hearts. I, too, as a girl, once broke. My head. And when this happened, I, like many other humans, did not allow myself the time and resources to fully rest, heal, recover. Of Course, there are excuses: No health insurance. Boss wants me back in the office tomorrow. You must pay for the ambulance. I'm out of sick days. No paid maternity leave. Need to get back to swim practice. There are, essentially, human excuses, but more specifically, American excuses. I'm confined to a comprehension of human difficulties through an American lens, no matter how hard I try to break out of the star-spangled brainwashing I was subject to from a young girl's age. In a way, the recognition that these issues are uniquely American makes it worse, because they are entirely avoidable.

If a lot of people are suffering because of a few people, why didn’t the majority do something about it a long time ago? Why’d everyone let it get so bad?” “If you drop a lobster in a pot of boiling water,” Zyrha tells him, “it’ll thrash around for its life.” “Wouldn’t we all?” Darrion smirks. “If you drop the lobster in a pot of cool water and slowly raise the temperature, it’ll die without a struggle. It’ll get used to the incremental increases until it’s too late to know it’s dead. You asked how we got here. The temperature had been rising in the Old States for a long time. People were dying left and right without a struggle. A few leaders had control over everything: money, power, the military, health care, schools, utilities, transportation, laws, courts, and the media. They had everything. Everything except the one thing every person in power needs.” “What’s that?” Darrion asks through a strained quiver. “An enemy.” “An enemy,” he repeats. “The question became which one. There were so many to choose from.” Zyrha claps her hands and gives a sarcastic laugh. “Black people. Brown people. Asians. Mexicans. Arabs. Women. The biracial. The multiracial. Old people. Young people. Short people. The overweight, the underweight, the sick, the helpless, the homeless, the unemployed. The asexual, the bisexual, the homosexual, the transgendered. People with special needs. The neurodivergent. Pot-smokers. Immigrants. Socialists. Communists. Atheists. Jews. Muslims. Intellectuals. Influencers. Athletes. Academics. Writers. Pacifists. Celebrities.” Zyrha pauses to draw in a long breath. “They were all contrived of course. They were invented enemies designed to occupy the amygdala—that’s the brain’s fear center—so the prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain responsible for rational thought and good decision-making—wouldn’t take over. Anyway, there’d been a lot of manufactured enemies, and, frankly, they’d been done to death.

Your five-year-old son wanders around his kindergarten classroom distracting other kids. The teacher complains: he can’t sit through her scintillating lessons on the two sounds made by the letter e. When the teacher invites all the kids to sit with her on the rug for a song, he stares out the window, watching a squirrel dance along a branch. She’d like you to take him to be evaluated. And so you do. It’s a good school, and you want the teacher and the administration to like you. You take him to a pediatrician, who tells you it sounds like ADHD. You feel relief. At least you finally know what’s wrong. Commence the interventions, which will transform your son into the attentive student the teacher wants him to be. But obtaining a diagnosis for your kid is not a neutral act. It’s not nothing for a kid to grow up believing there’s something wrong with his brain. Even mental health professionals are more likely to interpret ordinary patient behavior as pathological if they are briefed on the patient’s diagnosis.[15] “A diagnosis is saying that a person does not only have a problem, but is sick,” Dr. Linden said. “One of the side effects that we see is that people learn how difficult their situation is. They didn’t think that before. It’s demoralization.” Nor does our noble societal quest to destigmatize mental illness inoculate an adolescent against the determinism that befalls him—the awareness of a limitation—once the diagnosis is made. Even if Mom has dressed it in happy talk, he gets the gist. He’s been pronounced learning disabled by an occupational therapist and neurodivergent by a neuropsychologist. He no longer has the option to stop being lazy. His sense of efficacy, diminished. A doctor’s official pronouncement means he cannot improve his circumstances on his own. Only science can fix him.[16] Identifying a significant problem is often the right thing to do. Friends who suffered with dyslexia for years have told me that discovering the name for their problem (and the corollary: that no, they weren’t stupid) delivered cascading relief. But I’ve also talked to parents who went diagnosis shopping—in one case, for a perfectly normal preschooler who wouldn’t listen to his mother. Sometimes, the boy would lash out or hit her. It took him forever to put on his shoes. Several neuropsychologists conducted evaluations and decided he was “within normal range.” But the parents kept searching, believing there must be some name for the child’s recalcitrance. They never suspected that, by purchasing a diagnosis, they might also be saddling their son with a new, negative understanding of himself. Bad

The biggest danger is, by its nature, the least exciting. It is the sickness that comes from doing nothing. Public health experts have even invented a new word—obesogenic, or fat-making—to describe low-density neighborhoods like Weston Ranch. This is one of the reasons that, aside from sedentary Saudi Arabians and some South Pacific Islanders, Americans are now the fattest people on the planet.

Globalisation and technology have already cut a swathe through previously secure professions, and 3D printing technology will soon wipe out the last of the manufacturing industries. The internet won’t replace those jobs, and what place for the middle-classes if twelve people can run a giant corporation? I’m no communist firebrand, but even the most rabid free-marketeer would concede that market-forces capitalism, instead of spreading wealth and security throughout the population, has grotesquely magnified the gulf between rich and poor, forcing a global workforce into dangerous, unregulated, insecure low-paid labour while rewarding only a tiny elite of businessmen and technocrats. So-called ‘secure’ professions seem less and less so; first it was the miners and the ship- and steel-workers, soon it will be the bank clerks, the librarians, the teachers, the shop-owners, the supermarket check-out staff. The scientists might survive if it’s the right type of science, but where do all the taxi-drivers in the world go when the taxis drive themselves? How do they feed their children or heat their homes and what happens when frustration turns to anger? Throw in terrorism, the seemingly insoluble problem of religious fundamentalism, the rise of the extreme right-wing, under-employed youth and the under-pensioned elderly, fragile and corrupt banking systems, the inadequacy of the health and care systems to cope with vast numbers of the sick and old, the environmental repercussions of unprecedented factory-farming, the battle for finite resources of food, water, gas and oil, the changing course of the Gulf Stream, destruction of the biosphere and the statistical probability of a global pandemic, and there really is no reason why anyone should sleep soundly ever again.

Living in Mexico City is a two-way street. So much waste is produced in the city each day that the environment can’t absorb it all, and the organic and inorganic solids, fluids and gases that accumulate inevitably make their way into our body through our nose, mouth and even our skin. The longer someone lives in Mexico City, the more material from the environment enters into and is stored within their body, thus directly affecting their health and longevity. When exposed to high levels of toxic substances for a sufficient amount of time human beings tend to get sick and die.

When I put down Lance Armstrong’s book, I understood something profoundly. Edie, if you can move, you’re not sick. I decided right then and there that no matter what cancer did to me I would continue to move. Movement was what the physical body was designed to do; it was how it coped and functioned. Movement was vitality. It was life. I would move. Always. No matter what. Until my last breath, I would move.

What images do I associate with the Christmas music as I see them set forth on the Christmas Tree?... An angel, speaking to a group of shepherds in a field; some travelers, with eyes uplifted, following a star; a baby in a manger; a child in a spacious temple, talking with grave men; a solemn figure, with a mild and beautiful face, raising a dead girl by the hand; again, near a city gate, calling back the son of a widow, on his bier, to life; a crowd of people looking through the opened roof of a chamber where he sits, and letting down a sick person on a bed, with ropes; the same, in a tempest, walking on the water to a ship; again, on a sea-shore, teaching a great multitude; again, with a child upon his knee, and other children round; again, restoring sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the deaf, health to the sick, strength to the lame, knowledge to the ignorant; again, dying upon a cross, watched by armed soldiers, a thick darkness coming on, the earth beginning to shake, and only one voice head. "Forgive them, for they know not what they do!

There are those who can take up their grief and bear it, strong natures who feel their own powers through the very heaviness of their burden. Weaker people give themselves up to their sorrow passively, as they would submit to a sickness; and like a sickness their sorrow pervades them, drinks itself into their innermost being and becomes a part of them, is assimilated in them through a slow struggle, and finally loses itself in them, as they return to perfect health. But there are yet others to whom sorrow is a violence done them, a cruelty which they never learn to accept as a trial or chastisement or as simple fate. It is to them an act of tyranny, an expression of personal hate, and it always leaves a sting in their hearts. Children do not often grieve in this way, but Niels Lyhne did. For had he not been face to face with God in the fervor of his prayers? Had he not crawled on his knees to the foot of the throne, full of hope, tremulous with fear, and yet firm in his faith in the omnipotence of prayer, with courage to plead until he should be heard? And he had been forced to rise from the dust and go away with his hope put to shame. His faith had not been able to bring the miracle down from heaven, no God had answered his cry, death had marched straight on and seized its prey, as if no sheltering wall of prayers had been lifted toward the sky.

What should a city accomplish after it meets our basic needs of food, shelter, and security? • The city should strive to maximize joy and minimize hardship. • It should lead us toward health rather than sickness. • It should offer us real freedom to live, move, and build our lives as we wish. • It should build resilience against economic or environmental shocks. • It should be fair in the way it apportions space, services, mobility, joys, hardships, and costs. • Most of all, it should enable us to build and strengthen the bonds between friends, families, and strangers that give life meaning,