A Hypochondriac’s Miracle Cure

Hypochondriacs are folks obsessed with health issues. They make illness mountains out of wellness mole hills. If you change the ‘issue’ to something that bothers you personally, the making of mountains out of mole hills may sound familiar. I reckon we are all obsessed, to some degree, with some area of life. Thus, the hypochondriac’s cure really applies to us all.

I call this a hypochondriac’s cure because of a recent discussion with my son over his hypochondriac tendency, slight though it is. Obsession, what ever the issue or degree, occurs when thinking goes to extremes (pushed there by emotion, naturally). Pulling thought back toward the middle is difficult, especially when in the throws. The mind needs a model of moderation to refer to.

The word ‘moderation’ itself is used as a model, often by those who are judging other people’s immoderation. Of course, people also use various religious models of moderation, for personal guidance. Alas, moderation as a universal law is awfully fluid, i.e., moderation for one person is often immoderation for another, and visa versa. Moderation is relative to one’s individual nature, and so isn’t the clear-cut cure-all we try to make it.

I am finding that the ‘non-locality’ exemplified in Schrödinger’s cat makes a marvelous model of moderation, if one accepts all that ‘weird’ mysterious sameness. Reality isn’t ‘this’ or ‘that’, it is both this and that. Alas, we are neurologically set up to experience reality as polar contrasts (ying & yang, good & bad, life & death, etc.). You could say biology hoodwinks us (and all life) into seeing differences more than similarities. Perceiving difference provokes more interaction.

Seeing the mysterious sameness inherent in Schrödinger’s cat, and other paradoxes, allows me to peek through and see ‘it’ whole. The more I get my head around the view that both sides share the same coin, the less obsession can get a toe hold in my head. I suppose the difficulty lies in getting one’s head around what seems paradoxical. Anything that can loosen one’s trust in word meaning helps. The Tao Te Ching helped me a lot, as did correlations.

And the miracle is? Well, it’s a miracle that anyone can swallow this cure. Once swallowed however, recovery happens to us naturally.