UNDERSTANDING THE HEALTHY
The healthy in all centuries have misunderstood the sick. In the days when sickness was supposed to be the result of possession by devils, the healthy gathered around the invalid, beating upon drums. When all disease was supposed to be the chastening of the Lord, they gathered at the bedside again, teaching repentance of sins. And in our own generation, they come again around the sufferer telling him to take his mind off himself.
I myself, being healthy, have never been the victim of that form of ministration. I have simply observed the effect of it on others. And since there is no hope of converting the healthy from this habit, the next best thing is to explain the obscure workings of the healthy mind.
Of course, no two healthy people are quite alike, and general statements about any great composite type are dangerous. But no matter how divergent their styles, all up-to-date, unspoiled, healthy persons can be trusted to make certain stock remarks to or about the sick. The context may vary, but sooner or later the following phrases will crop up: “pulling yourself together”; “bracing up”; “standing a little real hardship”; “forgetting all about your aches and pains”; “people who never have time to be sick”; “people who are worse off than you are”; and, “taking your mind off yourself.”
At any one of these cheery phrases, the spirited sick man feels his gorge begin to rise. He knows that if his gorge rises, so will his temperature. With a mighty effort he swallows his temper, and his temperature goes up anyway at the exertion. All this time he knows that his visitor meant well, and he despises himself for his irritation. He has no way of defending himself, for, if he should describe how ill he really is, would not that convict him of having his mind on himself, of craving sympathy, of “enjoying poor health”? Over and over the words of his visitor go ringing in his ears—words intended tactfully to stimulate recuperation. “It's fine to see you looking so well. All you need to do now is to get something to take up your mind. I know how hard it will be, for I have been there myself, but circumstances were such that I just had to brace up. It would be the best thing in the world for you if you only had to rough it a little.”
Any one of these remarks is guaranteed to leave the person who is really suffering in a very storm-beaten state of mind, unless by the luckiest chance he understands two basic facts about the healthy: first, our healthy imagination; second, our healthy ignorance.
The healthy imagination, in the first place, cannot bear to move in circles. Any novelist knows that a story must progress. If the action is dramatic, the final downfall or the final victory must follow swiftly upon the heels of conflict. The attention wanders if the story goes monotonously along in the style of “Another grasshopper came and brought another grain of corn. And then another grasshopper came and brought another grain of corn.”
On the same principle, the general public gives intelligent understanding to the great dangerous diseases where there is a grand struggle of life and death, where the sufferer grows rapidly worse, reaches the crisis, hangs for a moment between time and eternity, and then either dies or gets well. Here is the stuff of contest, the essence of Greek drama: pity and fear, unity of action, and dignity of conflict. The imagination rises to it as to whirlwinds and the noise of waterspouts. But when it comes to the good friend who neither dies nor gets well, who begins to recover and succumbs again, travelling the monotonous round of one ill after another, none of them fatal,—then the healthy imagination stops following the circles.
It is time by every calculation that our friend recovered. We hope that he will soon be well and strong. He hopes so, too, we admit broad-mindedly. But most of us fall into generalities at this point. We are not impatient with our friend; we are impatient for him. A delayed convalescence, we have heard, is usually the result of mismanagement somewhere; the wrong doctor, perhaps, a family inclined to spoil by kindness, or mind over matter imperfectly understood. Suppose our sick friend could get away from his anxious relatives, and be suddenly cast upon a desert island; would he not have to brace up and rattle down his own cocoanuts with a will? We have known such cases—paralytics who got thrown overboard and nimbly swam ashore, rescuing women and children on their way. Our friend is not an extreme case like that, but, if he actually had to get to work, would he not forget all about his troubles, and suddenly find himself cured?