This morning I saw a wonderful quotation by Bruce Chatwin, an English travel writer, novelist and journalist. Although Patagonia, his first book, cast him as a travel writer, in his own mind Chatwin was a storyteller. His true passion was bringing to light unusual tales.

Chatwin’s quotation that caught my eye is: “Man’s real home is not a house but the road, and life itself is a journey to be walked on foot.”

I was inspired to write the following poem.

No “I”

19 March 2007

Seated in a large room
filled to capacity with the
community’s most
influential

“Modern medicine
is
like
mopping up the mess
without
turning off
the faucet”

Someone
in the audience
asked
“What is the difference
between wellness and illness?”

Placing the marker
ceremoniously
on the clean
white page
of the flip chart,
Dean Ornish, M.D. wrote:

WELLNESS
ILLNESS

Standing
for a moment
in stillness
breathing
before
circling the ‘WE’ in wellness
and the ‘I’ in illness

before pausing again

then speaking slowly

“The difference
between WE and I,”

he continued

“There is no “I”
in wellness.”

A few other comments from that talk:

When you are going to indulge yourself, don’t tell yourself it is good for you.

People are not afraid to make big life style changes, they have kids!

These are choices worth making even if you don’t live one day more—because you will feel better.

Pain is not the problem, it is just the messenger. Bypassing pain is like clipping the wires on your smoke detector and going back to sleep.

I will close this post with a poem by Rumi, a 13th Century Persian poet, and Sufi mystic:

Don’t Go Back to Sleep

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth
across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

Attending that talk way back in March of 2007, reading Rumi, being a Healing Touch Certified Practitioner and learning NLP and Hypnosis, has been my walking the journey of my life on foot. I have been and continue to be dedicated to helping Western medicine transition from an “I”llness based system to a “WE”llness based lifestyle.

If you are reading this, that has been part of your life on foot, too.

Don’t go back to sleep….