Back Pain, Blessings, and Liberty

This is a blog about back pain, but people with back pain are people first, patients second. There will always be issues and events that transcend and envelop people and patients everywhere. This post is from a newsletter I have sent out each holiday season since 2002.

Death is not a tragedy. A wasted life is. Don’t get me wrong. Life has value all by itself. This isn’t about abortion, capital punishment, stem cell research, or vegetarianism. From single cell bacteria to your own children, life has value. It means something. It wants to keep on living, even if it hurts. It gets one chance to participate in the circle; one chance to shout at the moon and echo through the ages.
Though we are born with value, we give life real meaning and purpose by the way we live. At the end, we get to look back and see where and how we made a difference. Erik Erikson labeled the final stage of life maturation "ego integrity vs. despair". We need to believe that we did some good; that we accomplished something meaningful, perhaps even more important than our own lives--something that will transcend our deaths and mark our place in the universe; or we feel an existential despair from which we cannot return. For people like Einstein or Bill Gates, this is easy. For the rest of us, it’s a little more subtle.
I don’t know that I am a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew. I attend a Presbyterian church a half dozen times a year. But I always attend at Easter and Christmas. There is something enriching, universal, and powerful about the cycle of birth and death along with the primitive, archetypal belief that in some way we can transcend death. I believe that life has transcendent meaning when there is something more important than death, and by extension our own lives.
And so we come to Iraq. It matters not what you think of the war in Iraq. I think it’s a horribly misguided enterprise driven by the “war on terror” and a president who looked America in the eye and lied to us, not the first or the last to do so. George Bush will end up just a blip in American History, but not so for our armed forces. They transcend Tweedle Dum. The red, white, and blue of the American flag doesn’t simply stand for freedom, but the willingness to fight for freedom, to die for freedom, so our children’s, children’s children will have the opportunity for life, liberty, and a fair chance at happiness. The armed forces stand proud and resolute as perfect symbols of the strength in freedom, democracy, and individual rights.
What the armed forces do is at the pleasure of the current president, the commander-in-chief. But their underlying purpose is forever. Whether in the glorious rightness of World War’s I and II or the mire of moral paralysis that was Vietnam, the armed forces embody the best in all of us; honor, fidelity, commitment to a just cause, and true bravery defined as “integrity in action.” They make their lives and so their deaths meaningful. They live a principle and by a code that transcends the petty machinations of politicians, so that we can make our dreams real.
This holiday season, as with all others, we will spend some time reflecting on our lives, making plans for the coming year, and maybe getting back in touch with what’s really important, things like health and family. You can look back on the blur of the past year and wonder how it passed so quickly. You can think about your core values and whether or not you’re living up to them. Therein lies one path to meaning and purpose; having the integrity to live in accordance with moral beliefs.
America’s strength and national integrity survives in and through our armed forces. They have an absolute code of honor, and by God and country they live in accordance. From Corporal Roberto Abad to Private First Class Casey Zylman there are 3897 heroes who must now live on in our memories. Sometime this holiday, during one of our toasts, let’s honor the men and women who will never again be home with their families as well as those who will. Please go to www.cnn.com/specials/2007/iraq/forces/casualties and maybe toast one particular hero by name. You might also donate a prepaid phone card so that a soldier can call home.
Corporal Abad stood on a wall in the dark and cold beside a fallen comrade and said “I won’t let them hurt you. Not tonight. Not on my watch. You can sleep safe, now. All secure sir.”
God bless America and God bless our Armed forces. May their holidays and yours be safe and warm.

Dr. Tim