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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
November 9, 2003
The joy of illness
I've been off sick the last couple of weeks attended by delightful nurses and enjoying one of those good scares you get during the transition to crabbed age from youth. Something happens that looks potentially life threatening -- since we are vain creatures who fear death -- and then the results come back and it has blown over. Meanwhile one discovers things about oneself one never knew. For instance until several weeks ago I was unaware that I had a blood pressure. I thought only other people had those. So vain in fact are human beings that we often forget that we will die. We do not forget entirely of course; any more than we cease to suspect there is a God. But we post-moderns try especially hard to mask the fact of our mortality. My dear friend George Jonas put this well in explaining all contemporary fads for dieting exercise cosmetic surgery. We want to leave a beautiful corpse. He points to what is unique in our culture -- the desire to die in a state of perfect health. And it is often achieved. Another friend who enjoys his food -- who drinks smokes flirts gambles and is progressing through a serene old age -- claims the only exercise he gets is as a pallbearer at the funerals of joggers. "It's a warning to you I was told, by someone expressing concern for my health. A warning of what, I wondered. I think she meant, a warning that I must henceforth live a healthier lifestyle". To hell with that. I suppose if one were a little short on potassium one might live on a diet of banana extract and potato skins with the odd boiled vegetable for filler. But all that will achieve is to make death a little more appealing. In the end not even potato skins can save you -- gorgeous as they may be with sour cream and chives and great dollops of fresh-churned butter. Good health is glorious; longevity is glorious; both are surely better than we deserve; and neither is guaranteed to anyone. Consider instead the advantages of bad health and an early death. Far less opportunities to sin for instance -- whether against the tenets of the "healthy lifestyle" or against those of almighty God. For as I was recently reminded there is little evil one may do while bedridden. The mere thought of bad behaviour requires too much energy. And the dead can do nothing at all. In many the former condition enhances empathy. I have found this about hangovers for instance. They are not enjoyable in themselves but there is much good to be had from them. In my own case an excruciating hangover has a humbling effect; it makes me appreciate the lives and tribulations of all the humble people around me. And so great are the moral advantages of this that I have sometimes charitably remembered them while deciding to order another pint. Dostoevsky wrote well on the advantages of a toothache though he carried the argument towards perversity. Pain is a thing which you may do much with. The Christians suggest "offering it up" as a kind of awkward gift in return for one's salvation. Illness in itself is not much fun. But in the giving of a gift there is joy. Likewise in death: it is no use dying to no purpose. One ought to achieve something in one's death to offer it up. It is said that everyone dies alone again in worldly terms. It cannot be shared the way you share Smarties. But like everything else you must do on your own it is well to use it as a means to a good end -- an end beyond itself. I fell on a passage in St. Augustine while in bed the other day quoted in St. Francis de Sales (Introduction to the Devout Life the book to read after C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity). He said It is the great fault of men to want to enjoy things which they are only meant to use, and to use those which they are only meant to enjoy. We ought to enjoy spiritual things, and only use those which are material. Now as often turns out Augustine was writing for our society even more than for his own. Though as I become more familiar with history I see that the times and places through which he moved were not unlike ours. There is much in common at the end of any empire or civilization as realities that were concealed are put on plain view especially forms of degradation. He lived through the fall of "Rome"; we would seem to be living through the fall of "the West". And this exchange of material for spiritual benefits -- isn't that what we' re all about today? A friend of mine died recently and I fear bitterly. A very likeable bold passionate character endowed I think from birth with more than her share of natural virtues. But in the end struck down by cancer in her prime and naturally angry about it. She had played with life she had enjoyed it and it was over too soon. And now she was as inconsolable as a child called in from play. For she had put her faith in just those things that must be taken away. Another friend died by his own hand hanged himself after many years carrying a huge burden of guilt inside him. I happened to know something about his guilt -- that he had earned it -- and also something about the man. He had this huge burden and didn't know what to do with it how to get rid of it. It broke him down over time and by the end as another friend said His suicide was only a formality. A third a total stranger I watched being killed when his bicycle was hit by a car. Helmetless his head struck the pavement. It was the "perfect" accident in the sense that the man was in a blind spot which the driver of the car could not have seen; nor could he have seen the car. The "meaning" of the death was in its meaninglessness the pure bad luck. (See Luke 12:46.) There are many many bad ways to die. These are just three of them. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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