Sickness Benefits

I’ve been operating at less than 100% for a whole month now. It is very frustrating, but I sense it is nearly over, and I have enough energy to learn a few lessons.

It started in Toronto. Perhaps because I got myself a bit sunburned, I picked up a cold-like bug somewhere with excessive air conditioning. It might have become worse on the plane home, but in any case it lingered, as summer bugs can with all that stale and recycled air. The Princeton choir festival became hard work, even though my vocal chords were more or less OK. The long drives, strange beds and required focus all took their toll. Perhaps because of all that, I ran awkwardly to get out of a rainstorm and tweaked a knee, and I am still favouring one side today as a result. That surely contributed to falling down the stairs a week later, bruising a rib and my tailbone and causing more lingering pain. All these things have healed slowly. The relentless humidity and consequent disturbed sleep will not have helped.

It could have been worse. I could sing at Princeton. I had poor control of some bodily functions there, but was rescued by a spare pair of pants. I managed to leave my credit card at a restaurant and my phone somewhere else, but found both without consequences. The stairs were hard, but only a short block. I had a near mess driving home from Princeton, but hit nothing worse than a grass verge. Everything is healing.

Some of the lessons are rather obvious. Don’t sit too long in the sun. Recognise that everything takes longer to heal when you are a bit older, so don’t behave like a kid. Hold the handrail on staircases. Look after credit cards. Drive carefully. Get out of the city in summer. Make sure you have spare pants handy.

But there are somewhat deeper lessons too. First, it is not a coincidence that all these things followed from each other. One failure created vulnerability in other systems. It seems odd, but when you are sick, everything seems to go wrong more often. It becomes impossible to take something out of the fridge without a spillage, which then creates more work and more chance for things to go wrong. I found myself using extra care with everything, counting to ten often and going deliberately slowly. It is hard to break out of such a cycle.

All this gets into our heads. We get angry more easily. We become morose, and sometimes behave like victims or assign blame unreasonably. It feels like the cycle will only get worse and worse, which requires a conscious effort to respond with optimism and hope.

This positive attitude is one of things we need to work through times of sickness or vulnerability. Another one is help from others. Acts of kindness and love are such a relief. People not judging or complaining at least avoids making things worse.

That is where we can all learn the most from when we are sick. If we can remember how we feel when we are below par, it can help us deal with others when they are. This month has often reminded me of the two or three occasions when I have been really struggling to put one foot in front of the other, and of the critical help received during those times. I am lucky to be rarely sick. So that help can be me, whether at the local care home or supporting friends or simply being kind to people who need it. “Be kind”, said Henry James and others. Good advice indeed, and advice with the bonus that we always feel better when we are kind.

Such times also help me recall the role carers play in our society, and how carers are consistently undervalued, underpaid and under-rewarded. Give me a carer over a soldier any day.

Being sick also helped me reflect in a different way about the nature of human progress. For all of us, just getting through the day is hard, every single day. Whether it is dealing with pain, or managing relationships, or struggling through chores, or belittling ourselves to earn enough money, or handling mishaps, life is a road with many bumps.

When we are sick, we notice all those bumps rather more. It can stop us from devoting any of our energy onto things that might benefit others or society or lead to progress. If we are already vulnerable, being sick can lead us towards addiction, depression or even abuse or crime.

Now consider those for whom our sick day is like their regular day. That may be someone hungry, or in debt, or already addicted, or suffering abuse, or chronically disabled. If you think about it, that covers most of humanity. It is no wonder really that progress is so patchy, and driven only be a privileged minority, and that depression and abuse are so prevalent. If you can’t get through the day, and can’t see how things might improve, that becomes a likely outcome.

Perhaps 50 years ago, only 5% of us could devote maybe 5% of our energy, 5% of the time; to anything we might call progress. For the rest, there was no chance, and even for the lucky ones we needed a following wind. Conversely, for 20% of us had to devote at least 20% of energy 20% of the time fighting to avoid slipping into depression or another failing outcome.

Considering the whole of humanity, maybe those percentages were even less favourable. In the first batch, we could pretty well rule out India and Africa, as well as most women and most people over sixty.

Now, thanks to global progress on medicine, affluence, education and opportunity, both sets of percentages might have become 10%. If true, the impact on progress would have been to multiply its potential by 8, and the likelihood of the bad outcomes would have diminished by a factor of 8 as well. That is another way to explain the acceleration of progress described by Steven Pinker.

It also points a path forward. If the first group could become 20%, and the second one reduced to 5%, it would create two more eight-fold multipliers. Doesn’t that seem eminently achievable? Consider how China and other countries are taking millions out of poverty. Marvel at improvements in healthcare, not only saving lives but also offering a better quality of life. See how the next generation has a more useful education than the last, across more of the cohort. Understand that the recent drops in crime will only lead to further drops, as troubled districts pull themselves out of misery.

And what about more everyday advances? We all spend so much less of our lives shopping for groceries, or cooking, or waiting for home visits from utilities, or getting about, thanks to smartphones and google and all the other advances in technology. That percentage of our energy devoted to simply getting through our day has gone down, even though it seems we have replaced most of it with wasting time on facebook or games.

Luckily, I am rarely sick. I hate it, and I’m not a good patient, but I am blessed with kind people around me. I’m also blessed that sickness might take me out of the minority with energy to make progress, but there is plenty of margin before it risks pushing me to addiction or depression. It also has the benefit of letting me count my blessings, and also to count the blessings of a rapidly advancing world. Now, I just have to remember how it feels like to be sick for long enough that I can train myself to be more kind to others, more often. Oh, and never to forget those pants.