You Are Not a Machine

We are sometimes tempted to think of ourselves as machines. Medical illustrations of the tendons and pulleys of our body can make us seem so. Freud, himself, imagined our minds as made up of parts: an id, ego, and superego. So if we're composed of parts, some people make the jump that we're completely machinelike and everything in life is completely predictable-we have no free will.

I say phooey.

When preparing for a marathon, athletes set a schedule, such as five miles daily and an extra five at specific intervals, and they may win. Employers expect workers to punch the time clock and mechanically grind out the same work every day. With undistracted attention. Like machines.

Not so fast! Every doctor can tell you that people are much less standardized and much less predictable than any machine. That assembly-line worker can be distracted by family worries. We docs see the injuries, I regret to say.

Simone Biles

The story of Simone Biles at these 2021 Olympics provides a timely example. While this exceptional gymnast has done the seemingly impossible on her way to numerous championships, she recognized that all her abilities were not with her on arrival in Japan. She phrased it differently, but she might as well have said that she was not a machine. She doesn't just turn a switch and safely execute flips and twists high in the air. Her mind, her body, her emotions, her entire being must be in place to attempt the impossible and survive.

In Japan, in 2021, it took courage to stand down as she did-she caught considerable flak from the armchair army.

Let's briefly acknowledge the price many athletes pay for their effort. While we know many boxers and football players suffer cognitive loss and physical damage, have you ever seen a list of gymnasts who were paralyzed in action, most of these from the neck down? Here's one:

Sang Lan, 17, China
Jacoby Miles, 15, USA
Adriana Duffy, 18, Puerto Rico
Elena Mukhina, 20, Soviet Union
Julissa Gomez, 15, USA
Wang Yan, 15, China
Melanie Coleman, 20, USA
Jennifer Smyth, 16, Ireland

In our current world there is a thin line between an ordinary, boring day and death/destruction-be it a medical encounter, driving to work-or gymnastics.

Self-Governance

We are more than our collection of tissues and molecules. A meatcutter, a doctor, a musician, an athlete can perform almost magically one day and be clumsy on another. The ancients attributed the difference to the animus-or the soul: that which leaves us at the time of death.

This soul or animus, attended to, can guide us to proper action.

Here are some examples from medicine.

Once a man showed me a tiny lump at the edge of his eyelid, apparently benign. It looked simple to remove, and we scheduled him for a later date. When the day came, I looked at his eyelid. All the things that could go wrong suddenly loomed large in my imagination. It wasn't in me that day to remove it. I briefly explained and referred him to an eye doctor.
A man had successfully recovered from a heart attack and needed bypass surgery. From an abundance of caution, he scheduled the procedure at the world-famous Texas Heart Institute in Houston. The night before surgery he called me. Everyone seemed competent; they had poked and prodded and done tests and lab work all day. Surgery was tomorrow morning. For all that, he did not feel safe in that hospital. No one really looked at him; they looked at papers and screens. No one seemed to care about him as an individual-he felt like a slab of beef. He wondered if he should leave Houston and return to his local heart hospital. As you might guess, I agreed. He went home to Tacoma where his bypass surgery went off without complication.
One last, a counter example: Forty years ago, at an earlier stage of medicine's expertise with carotid artery surgery, a general surgeon told me that, every time, he slept poorly the night before doing that procedure. If you were his patient and you knew that, how would you respond?

All our lives, we are faced with unique tasks each day. Life can be thought of as a play, wrote Mr Shakespeare. There's an important difference-we real people don't get to rehearse.

An uncommonly capable patient told me the other day that she often felt inferior because she frequently questioned her own abilities. I empathized with the discomfort she described and reminded her that analyzing herself was a mark of responsibility. She was mentally rehearsing and considering the possible outcomes. She could be careless, or she could be introspective and thoughtful. And wasn't that a kind way to treat those around her?

She smiled.

Small Self and Large Self

Any parent knows the concept. I have a small self that gets tired or has a headache, and I have a larger Self, my family, that I will care for as much I possibly can. And they will do the same for me.

Just like these geese. Each takes a strenuous turn at the point of the vee. No shirking.

So much of our lives is spent balancing our ever-changing needs as individuals and what we need to do for each other as members of families, teams, and work groups.

A career coach once said that 90% of life is just showing up. Show up, do our part, remain until the task is complete. Sometimes we need to pick up the burden when our mates are injured or not at their best. And, once in a while, we need to tell them when we honestly need to fall back from the front line.

Introspection. Discipline and Courage

Many of our life challenges don't involve the risk of personal injury that Simone Biles faces, or injury to others as in the case of a truck driver or physician. Usually, our challenges involve facing our own fears, such as taking the risk of speaking up when we're afraid others will object. Those challenges may involve questions on the best way to interact with our family members or co-workers. Or undertaking a task we know will be difficult, or getting up off the couch to exercise when we don't feel like it.

Our abilities vary day by day. That needn't keep us from constant dedication to our goals.

So.

Don't pretend that your body is a machine. Let your own intuition and sense of your ability govern the amount of weight that you lift, the distance and speed at which you run, and how you approach your life challenges each day.