An eminent scientist recently stated quite seriously during a TV interview that, “We know what’s happening to the climate, we just don’t know how it’s going to affect the weather.”
I considered his insight for a second before yielding to a fit of uncontrollable laughter so encompassing that I slid off my recliner onto the floor. Between bouts of laughter, I tried to explain the strange behaviour to my wife who asked disbelievingly, “He didn’t really say that did he?” He did.
I delight in disrupting climate change discussions by quoting the guru (as if this was my own considered belief). The result is always the same, short contemplative silence, head shakes and in the right company anything from polite to raucous laughter. Usually, I’m greeted with frowning smiles and comments like, “You’re a dickhead Charlie.”
I love to look for parallels when presenting my views and wondered if I could draw on the climate change quote as a parallel with chronic disease management. Imagine our doctor declaring, “We know you have a chronic disease; we just don’t know how it will affect your health.”
Although just as unhelpful as the climate change statement, this is no laughing matter. Unlike environmental issues that are shared by everyone, chronic disease is personal, something that the afflicted individual is directly affected by and is motivated to do something about.
If I remove my cynic’s hat and don my thinking cap, I recognize a commonality; global warming is based on science and chronic disease is medically diagnosed. They are real with an overwhelming inevitability that they will affect our environmental and personal health.
Let’s look at chronic disease facts
1. It’s real
2. It’s probably incurable
3. It’s a pain in the ass (for some of us, literally)
4. It’s usually manageable
5. We have choices
There is no polite way of putting how to deal with the first 3 facts. Suck it up. Accept the thing and get ready to move on.
The first step forward is management of the chronic condition. This is rarely a simple process, it usually involves experimentation with drugs and treatments. It can take years to settle on a practical program, especially while learning how to filter the genuine advice from the crap.
Now that the condition is “under control” WE HAVE CHOICES.
Too many choices to list here. Now that we have accepted our limitations, we’re off the leash. We can head in any direction we choose, do whatever we want at our own pace and with whomever we like.
Merriam-Webster dictionary defines CHOICE as the opportunity or privilege of choosing freely (freedom of choice). My mathematical brain does this, choices =opportunities. The more choices we recognize the more opportunities walk through the door.
By accepting our chronic condition and mastering management thereof, we open the door to a world full of opportunity. Our first decision is whether to step through the door and juggle choices and opportunities: leave behind the world of troubles and surrender.
Ironically, many of the opportunities that now lay at our feet may not have known we existed if we hadn’t grabbed our chronic condition by the neck and waved it defiantly at the world.
Perhaps if we all thought of climate change (global warming) as a chronic disease that will adversely affect our health, we may choose to be proactive and be accountable for positive actions that will improve our quality of life.