It has been a better week in Tatamagouche. We got a little rain with the promise of more. I got my first hair cut DC (during Covid) and literally felt a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. The province agreed to let our hospital try out our new idea of urgent care. The nights have been a little less humid and better for sleeping.
I’ve been thinking of the word ‘better’. It’s a word that we use differently when talking about ourselves as opposed to external things. For instance, I could imagine coming to see you in the hospital during an illness and then visiting again a week later, and telling a mutual friend ‘she looks better.’ Or perhaps we were community organizers who’s planned event that was slow to catch on, but after the 4th time it seemed to be starting to slowly grow and we said to each other, ‘it’s getting better.’ In other words, we recognize incremental progress in people or events outside of ourselves.
We don’t, however, use the word the same way talking about ourself. Imagine that you had urgent surgery for a ruptured appendix. A couple of weeks later I see you walking slowly, wincingly, into the grocery store. I ask, ‘how’s it going?’ And you say something like, ‘I think it’s coming, but I’m not better yet.’ Or there has been the loss of someone I am close to, and in our discussion I say , ‘I think it will be a long time before I can say I’m better.’
When we look outside ourselves, better means progress. When we look inside ourselves, better means all better, healed, ideal. We tend to view ourselves as either completely broken or whole, but in others we grant the ability to be on a journey that shows progress. This is important to recognize in our patients who do the same thing. We may see positive change, they see a lack of wholeness. We may think they are ignoring the healing that is happening without recognizing that we would do exactly the same thing. We provide grace and encouragement for another’s journey far more than we are willing to accept for ourselves
A couple of people have helped me think about ‘better’ in perhaps a better way.
Mary Berry. Mary is the doyenne of the British Baking Show, a BBC fixture for years that has found new viewers (myself included) thanks to streaming and COVID. Without playoffs, there are only so many gruesome subtitled Scandinavian murders that one can watch before looking for more light and relatable entertainment. Mary is one of the judges on the show and her steely blue gaze, perfectly coiffed hair, gentle disappointment, and gracious encouragement make watching someone in a large party tent attempt to bake a Swedish Princess cake in 3 hours riveting television.
Mary’s observations encourage better. The home bakers that she judges recognize that pastry perfection is out of their reach, but all seem determined to make this one better, even slightly, than the last. And perhaps they will hear Mary’s praise, ‘that’s a little bit of alright.’ She seems genuinely delighted with their often awkward attempts and her pleasure is a worthwhile reward. I think that I need to see myself in the British Baking Show of life. Perfection is out of my reach, but what is in my reach today is something better, even slightly, than yesterday. I wonder how much more committed I would be to long term wholeness and health if I would be willing to look at what I just did; food, fitness, thoughts, emotions, rest, purposefulness; and say ‘that was a little bit of alright.’ And then come back to the tent tomorrow and try again for better.
Tim Noakes. Dr Noakes is the patriarch of modern exercise physiology. In fact he all but created the discipline of sports medicine and many of the principles of training, hydration, psychology, and safety in sport that are now accepted owe their early development to his curious mind. Tim also was a marathoner and ultra runner in the 70’s and 80’s … long before it was de riguer. Early in his career it was postulated, due to the lack of observed marathoners with heart disease, that running long distances was well nigh a guarantee of cardiac health. It was stated that a marathoner could not physiologically have atherosclerosis. Noakes studied this, reviewing autopsies on marathoners who had died from trauma, which required coroner assessment, and convincing some of the runners he met at races to volunteer to angiograms, no small ask in the 70’s. His research showed that there was actually little difference in hardening of the arteries between elite runners and age matched healthy others.
As an aside, Tim Noakes was a running evangelist. He loved to run. For years his tome The Lore of Running, was the go to manual for serious runners around the world. I find the fact that he did a study that disproved the degree of benefit that he both loved and was famous for, and still published the results, highly commendable. Such an ethic has been shown to be lacking in a significant amount of industry sponsored research today. In fact, he presented his findings at a symposium in New York City the same week that he registered to run the NYC marathon!
Noakes results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The Journal’s editorial would address the most controversial study in that edition of the NEJM. They commented on the running study. This scientifically conservative journal really worshipped at the evidence-based altar (not the gingham altar, for the BBS groupies). This paper was questioning the physiologic benefit of elite running. The editorial ends, ‘Until complete data are in, the exercisers’ enjoyment of the activity … should be sufficient. In exercise, as in good deeds, the reward must lie in the act itself.’ I need to point out that Noakes got these staid Boston docs to preach something like mindfulness in the 70’s!
What this is pointing to is that ‘better’ shouldn’t be about future possible benefit, it should be about ‘better’ living in the moment. We should free ourselves and others from striving for a future ‘better’ that, in the far distance, sounds like an ideal that we can never attain. ‘Better’ is a today that is rewarding itself, a little bit of alright.
