Chicken Soup for the Soul 20th Anniversary Edition (23 page)

The greatest mistake in the treatment of diseases

is that there are physicians for the body and physicians for the soul, although the two cannot be separated.

~Plato

S
urgery is controlled arrogance. Considering a heart surgeon needs to take a band saw through a patient’s breastbone in order to help him or her, confidence is more essential than politeness, humbleness and a slew of other socially rewarded attributes. But the operative word to describe surgeons is “controlled,” not “arrogance,” and our patients teach us the difference. The wisdom needed to offer true healing comes from listening to clues continually offered by people willing to risk their lives by trusting our judgment.

That includes people like Frank, who arrived at my hospital unconscious and barely alive, with a breathing tube down his throat and industrial strength drugs being pumped into both his swollen arms. A 52-year-old truck driver, Frank had suffered a massive heart attack — the leading cause of death in the U.S. — after sanding snowy roads during a 36-hour storm. Historically, his chances of surviving were less than 10 percent. But, today, we have mechanical pumps to support damaged hearts, and Frank Jones lived after undergoing this massive surgery. Modern medicine had worked. Or had it?

While I was busy giving myself a rotator cuff injury congratulating myself on the remarkable success of my operation, Frank was livid that we had saved him. More importantly, Frank was suicidal. He was a deeply religious person who believed that once he had lost his use and purpose in life, he should have been allowed to die with dignity.

Depression would cause Frank’s immune cells to stop functioning normally and increase his risk of infection. It could even increase his mortality rate after successful heart surgery. Large studies have revealed that pessimistic people’s worst fears often come true despite the medical facts, a frustrating reality for physicians.

I needed to search past high-tech solutions to save Frank and delve into the low-tech arena of love and faith. After brainstorming with my patient’s wife, we brought his minister to the hospital, who convinced Frank to make the church his life. He became a model patient and even began working as an evangelist for the Christian Motorcycle Association, helping gangs, because, in his words, “society has turned its back on them.”

Patients like Frank are not described in my medical textbooks, but I have learned much about healing from them. I entered medicine with the naïve belief that we knew most everything we needed to cure the sick and that high-technology solutions would close the few remaining gaps in our healing armamentarium. My specialty, heart surgery, was a spectacular example of this modern success story. After all, if the heart literally breaks, we can even replace it with a new one — the ultimate fix. But once I was on the inside of medicine looking out, I learned that there were many things left to discover.

I did not yet understand at a visceral level the poetic significance of this organ. When the heart fails, people feel betrayed. How could they be worthy of life if their own internal metronome has abandoned them? Even the immune response that their bodies create against the newly transplanted organs is called “rejection” — exactly how the patient feels.

But I soon began to understand that the answers to wellness frequently lay with my patients themselves. They willingly became our research laboratory. The results profoundly changed my views on healing and yield lessons for all America.

When people are desperately gripping the precipice of death, they look for any solution that can pull them back onto the safe plain of life. Many of these tools come from faraway lands, where they have provided a foundation of healing for millennia. Some call these approaches alternative, integrative or complementary medicine, but I believe that they all represent the globalization of health. Let’s take the best healing lessons from all our ancestors and societies and share the wisdom that, like our hearts, pounds life into our souls.

~Mehmet Oz, MD

Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

~Abraham Lincoln

I
once witnessed a most delightful conversation between a mother and her young daughter. The whole conversation lasted barely a minute, and yet I have never forgotten it. It happened while I was sitting in a busy terminal at the New Delhi international airport, in India, waiting for my flight to be announced. The mother and her daughter, who was named Angela, were sitting opposite me. Angela, who was about three years old, was talking and drawing, talking and eating, talking and reading. Meanwhile, her mother was busy sorting out plane tickets and passports.

Although I could hear Angela talking, I wasn’t really listening to what she was saying until she suddenly announced, “I am happiness, Mummy.” The words caught my ear. And I found myself smiling.
What a great thought,
I thought to myself. After that, Angela leaned over and tugged on her mother’s T-shirt so as to get her full attention.

“I am happiness, Mummy,” said Angela. “What, darling?” her mother asked

“I am happiness, Mummy,” repeated Angela.

“No, darling. What you mean to say is, ‘I am happy,’” explained her mother.

“No, Mummy,” explained Angela. “I am happiness.”

By now, I noticed that several other passengers were listening in on the conversation. Angela’s mother noticed also. She was a little embarrassed, but we all realized just how sweet and funny the moment was.

“I — am — happy,” said Angela’s mother in a slow and deliberate voice.

“I — am — happiness,” replied Angela in a slow and deliberate voice.

Her mother smiled. “Okay, Angela, you are happiness.”

“Yes, Mummy, I am happiness,” said Angela, nodding her head. And that was it. A short and sweet conversation finished as suddenly as it had started. But it really got me thinking.

How would you live your life if you knew you were already happy?
Imagine how you would be. Imagine how good you would feel if you knew that your original nature is already happy. Imagine exactly how you would greet each new day knowing that
you are what you seek.
Imagine how much love and healing you would experience if you changed the purpose of your relationships from
finding happiness
to
sharing happiness.
Imagine how fantastic and successful you’d be if you followed your joy and you let your happiness shine through you. Imagine how you would be.

Imagine if, just for one moment, you surrendered completely to the original joy of your true nature. What a baptism that would be! Imagine how freeing it would be if you no longer needed the world to
make you happy.
What a blessing for all! Imagine how rich you would feel knowing your happiness is not separate from you and hidden away inside some external thing. Imagine how your attitude toward money would change. Imagine how much you would let yourself relax and
enjoy each moment
if you knew your joy is always with you and not someplace else. Imagine how your attitude to time would change. Imagine how you would be.

Imagine if every day you were to let the original joy of your
being
bless you and refresh you. Imagine if you made the purpose of your life not to
get happiness
but to
spread happiness.
Imagine how much you would enjoy yourself. Imagine how generous you would be. Imagine how kind you would be. Imagine what a great friend you would be. If you lived your life in the knowledge that your
being
is already happy, you would be free to be the person you “came to be.” Being already happy, you would not be afraid to love. In fact, you would probably become the most loving person you could possibly imagine.

Imagine how that would be.

~Robert Holden

From
Be Happy: Release the Power of Happiness in You
© 2009 by Robert Holden.

Published by Hay House; available at
www.hayhouse.com.

Sadness flies on the wings of the morning

and out of the heart of darkness comes the light.

~Jean Giraudoux

O
n December 14, 2012, to the collective shock of the world, twenty young children and six adults were killed in the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting. When I first heard about the event, I felt the same feelings we all feel when such tragedy happens, grief, sadness, anger, doubt about this world — but this time, with this shooting in particular, something was different.

Because I live in Newtown, Connecticut.

We’ve all heard the phrase “a little too close for comfort” or “too close to home” and in this case, it finally came true for me. No longer could I just watch on the news and say, “How sad...” as something happened yet again, in another town, another country, somewhere else. This time, it hit home, literally, and I could no longer allow myself to ignore the fact that at the deepest level, something had to change and I had to do whatever I could to play my part in that change.

Whether by coincidence or some sort of grand design, I’ve spent the last ten years studying, documenting and sharing a technique called “EFT,” or simply, “Tapping.” A combination of Ancient Chinese Acupressure and modern psychology, tapping has proven

to be extraordinarily effective in dealing with trauma, PTSD, stress and many of the accompanying conditions from events such as this shooting. So on that fateful day, I said to myself, “As terrible as all of this is, there’s an opening here for real change.” After countless hours of consultations with experts around the world, in tapping, disaster relief, PTSD and more, a plan was in place.

Dr. Lori Leyden, a bright light in the world who has spent years working with genocide survivors in Rwanda, helping them heal their deepest wounds, landed just days after the tragedy. A team of over forty volunteers came together within the week to get trained in the technique, and help work with the population. And sure enough, within days, we started meeting with parents who had lost their precious children, teachers from the school, kids from the school, first-responders and more.