To an outside observer this year might not appear to have been the best one for me in the health dimension. Besides a freak accident that halfway tore off a toe, detached a major tendon, and laid me up for a couple of months, I've recently learned that an ugly rough patch on my forehead is a basal cell carcinoma, the result of decades-ago sunburns. This kind of skin cancer is not serious, but it does need to come off soon. And I'm told that further such growths are likely to develop in the future.

But in spite of those ominous sounding events, this has really been an extraordinarily good year for me. Last month my main physician, happy with how my high blood pressure is under control, called me a "poster child" for hypertension management. She mainly credits properly-chosen low-dosage drugs, increased activity, and moderate weight loss. All well and good; I don't disagree. But they're a trivial side-effect of something else.

The real win, I've slowly come to realize, is not physical—it's mental. There's a huge distance still for me to go, but I've begun to figure out what to let go of and what to hang on to ... and how much magic Patience and Time can do in response to any challenge.

As Arnold Bennett said, "Sheer M. Aurelius, of course."

(cf. BennettOnStoicism (29 Apr 1999), MoreFunLessStuff (1 Oct 2002), PatienceAndTime (11 Jan 2005), LessMore (14 Mar 2005), DoWithout (4 Jun 2005), ...)

TopicLife - TopicPhilosophy - TopicStoicism - TopicPersonalHistory - 2005-07-30

(correlates: LeverAge, LetItSlide, UltramarathonMan, ...)