Just Suck it UP Already!

Written by craig

You think you've "got it bad" now?  Sit back and let me tell you about the "good old days . . ."

I tripped over a truly amazing warehouse of data the other day. (Okay, I admit I'm easily amused.) It was put together by Robert Fogel, a Nobel Laureate in economics, who decided to look at health records of several thousand Union Army veterans. 

He found that about 65 percent of eligible men between 18 at 25 had volunteered, and a quarter of them had been too physically disabled to even be considered. Now let's think this one through; And, according to a New York Times article on the subject, being incontinent of urine or being blind in one eye (as long as it wasn't the one you needed to aim  a musket) wouldn't keep you out. 

Oh, and forget about being one of the "lucky ones" who lived into their sixties. As Dr. Fogel puts it:

The findings challenge a long-held consensus that chronic disease grew more severe throughout the 20th century as medical advances began keeping the debilitated alive for longer. “Before we started, it was very common to believe that in earlier decades, infectious disease killed off the ‘weak sisters,’ the people who were constitutionally unsound,” Fogel says, “and that those who survived to 65 were fairly robust.” On the contrary, his research has revealed that by their mid- to late 60s, Union Army veterans had an average of 6.2 chronic conditions. For 65-year-old white men today, that figure is less than two. Meanwhile, the few Union pensioners who reached their 80s, Fogel says, were putting up with eight or nine chronic complaints. He wonders: “Why do they stay alive with so many different organ failures” and without the benefit of modern surgical and pharmaceutical advances? “That’s one of our puzzles now.”

So, how did these people manage to get through their short miserable lives? They just sucked it up, accepted that they couldn't do anything about the way things were, and went on.

Now, we have much improved nutrition, better medicine, and much easier lives. We also live longer and healthier by far than any of the previous generations. 'Anybody here want to go back to Civil War times, want to ignore the miracles that have given us more leisure time than our forefathers had total time? We could all just learn how to suck it up, to endure and appreciate the pain rather than avoid it.

I have a prediction. One-hundred years from now, our progeny will look back at our generation and gasp at the primitive way it addressed the crushing, deadly depression, the self-destructive mania, the gut-wrenching insomnia that destroys the very soul. Whereas those in the future will address it through genetics, chemistry, and physiology, we are one of the (hopefully) last generations to handle the pain by just sucking it up, relying on the elders of psychotherapy to teach us how to hold on.

Oh, Wait! I already rejected that antiquated notion. Psychotherapist though I may be, I've been on the chemicals myself for the past fourteen years. Right now, this approach is the exception. One hundred years from now, I believe, I KNOW, it will be the rule.

Peace.