Art as a key to unlocking whole health (and perpetual torment)

August 25, 2021

I have written a lot in this journal about whole health, the philosophy of generosity and the visibility of caretakers.  Watching the Paralympic Games in Tokyo this week, I am struck by how this is nowhere else more evident than with respect to handicap.

I am certainly not an expert in handicap, although I did watch my father live the last ten years of his life as a paraplegic.  I have a few takeaways.

The first one is that handicap brings us to the core of our humanity.  My father’s handicap was so staggeringly in-your-face; there was nothing subtle about it.  It involved a collective effort on the part of family members, nurses, physical therapists and other caregivers just to help him do the most basic things that we take for granted.

Every moment spent with my father made that abundantly obvious.  I will never, ever, ever take for granted the little things in life.  Getting in a car without the help of several people and several types of equipment.  Going to the bathroom alone, in the way that nature designed.  We never really appreciate the miracle of the human body until one minor disfunction causes it all to shut down. The little things are truly the big things.

The second takeaway I have with respect to handicap is how binary our understanding of it really is.  I would argue that we are all handicapped in some way (more due to our own unhealthy ways of living than due to our brain chemistry).  And we often dismiss behavior as insensitive or anti-social without recognizing how much of it is a result of handicap.

Handicap that is invisible or that we don’t take the time to examine in substance.  How many times do we assume that a person is simply acting insensitively without considering that the person may not have the ability to act otherwise?  Whether due to lack of emotional maturity or lack of communication, we spend little time thinking about and talking about all of our collective handicaps.

Today marks the 78th anniversary of the death of French philosopher Simone Weil (not to be confused with French judge and stateswoman Simone Veil).  She wrote much about liberty, mysticism and the human condition.  The quote I read today stayed with me all day:

La plénitude de l’amour du prochain, c’est simplement d’être capable de lui demander « Quel est ton torment ? »

It’s a question that we spend millions discussing in private with therapists.  Our binary, shame-ridden understanding of torment has led us to deal with it in quiet desperation, worried that others will find out, worried that we will be diagnosed with some sort of disorder.  In many cases, we are told that the key to resolving perpetual torment is taking prescription medication.  I would argue instead that in many cases we are just victims of an insane world. 

In English, we spend a lot of time asking each other “how are you”? But we might be asking the wrong question.  In French, we don’t say “how are you” but “how are you going”?  The understanding being of course that everything is a work in progress, and that we are all in constant evolution.

Because suicide is still very much a taboo subject, there is little research done on survivors of suicide and their families.  One recent study from Cornell University is worth discussing in this respect.  Following open-ended interviews with 17 people with chronically suicidal behavior, researchers determined that one of the key successful coping strategies is engagement with the arts.  The meaning of “art” in this context is not really provided, but I would imagine that it includes artistic creation or improvision as opposed to streaming content online.

Art has a huge role to play in health and healing, particularly following the pandemic.  Indeed, art is one of the few areas in which we feel comfortable talking about torment. Perhaps because artists are more honest about it.  They often speak of their work as a means of channeling their emotions and bringing the torment to a place of creation. 

And this is perhaps my final and most important takeaway with respect to handicap.  In many ways, artists have developed a method and vocabulary for dealing with torment in a way that many of us haven’t.  Whether it’s learned or self-taught, it’s certainly worth studying further.

Such a powerful idea that we still haven’t quite mastered, close to 80 years after it was articulated by Simone Weil.  What is your torment? 

And what would happen if we asked each other, not “how are you” but “how are you tormented”? “Or how are you handicapped”?

And if we really answered honestly.

CPM