The smallest physical ailment reminds us of our mortality. Its interruption to our day reminds us of our wealth in our otherwise good health.
“A healthy man wants a thousand things, a sick man only wants one.”
— Confucius
Without an ailment to distract us, we are the wealthiest we can be. We can whimsically muse, create, and love.
But being conscious of our mortality is a gift, too. If it weren’t for the time running out each passing day, we could procrastinate on everything.
As Viktor Frankl wrote in Yes to Life in Spite of Everything,
“We give life meaning not only through our actions but also through loving and, finally, through suffering. Because how human beings deal with the limitation of their possibilities regarding how it affects their actions and their ability to love, how they behave under those restrictions — the way in which they accept their suffering under such restrictions — in all of this they still remain capable of fulfilling human values.”
In short, we get our meaning from life in carrying out our duties, loving others, and our pain.
But, he continues with the question:
“‘What if we were immortal?’
“And we can give the answer: if we were immortal, then we could postpone everything, but truly everything. Because it would never matter whether we did a particular thing right now, or tomorrow, or the day after, or in a year, or in ten years, or whenever. No death, no end would be looming over us, there would be no limitation of our possibilities, we would see no reason to do a particular thing right now, or surrender ourselves to an experience just now — there would be time, we would have time, and infinite amount of time.
“Conversely, the fact, and only the fact, that we are mortal, that our lives are finite, that our time is restricted and our possibilities are limited, this fact is what makes it meaningful to do something, to exploit a possibility and make it become a reality, to fulfill it, to use our time and occupy it. Death gives us a compulsion to do so. Therefore, death forms the background against which our act of being becomes a responsibility.”
So our ailments, big and small, are a reminder of this existential reality. Our time to create and love and find meaning in our suffering is not unlimited. What we do today matters.
Thanks to Denise Bossarte for the photo.
