Illness can be life-changing

Recently, I saw a woman, Mary, for a heart problem. Starting about two years before, she noticed that her heart would race with even the slightest bit of exercise, and she would feel so dizzy that she would have to sit down. She saw a cardiologist, who recommended medication and told her that she had to stop intense exercise.

That was hard for Mary to hear because she had always been a go-getter. Before she found out about her heart, she had been training for a marathon while working a full-time, high-stress executive job along with raising two small children. She came to see me, desperate for someone to figure out a way that she could "be herself" again.

When I asked Mary what "being herself" meant, she said she just wanted everything to be normal again. She was in despair at how useless she felt — working limited hours at her job and having to ask so much for help in taking care of her kids.

I could see why Mary felt as though she had lost her sense of purpose and accomplishment. And her story reminded me of how hard illness can be. It is certainly true that we never come out of a problem thinking the same way as we went in, and that's a good thing. Every problem — and illness is one of the most powerful because it is so personal and physical — has the potential to transform us from the inside out. But that definitely doesn't mean that it is easy to walk the road.

Mary's heart problem was forcing her to re-examine everything she had considered important. And what she realized is that she had always prided herself on what she could do — goals, accomplishments, to-do lists.

She is not alone. As a society, particularly in the West, we are all very focused on doing. We measure our lives in terms of things we have accomplished — résumés, test scores and check lists. But we often forget that what we do is less important than who we are when we are doing it. I can smile at someone, and I can do it with love or with hatred.

What determines the impact of my action is not the smile — it is the intention of the person behind it. The same thing applies to any action. Whether I am giving money, walking down the street or giving someone flowers, the actions carry much less weight than the motivation behind them.

That is why when people talk about good communication, there is always such an emphasis on the fact that 75 percent of what we communicate is nonverbal. That is because people are very sensitive to the intentions and essence of the person communicating — whether they know it or not. It drives people crazy and confuses them when they get mixed messages — that is, when the real essence of the person and the words they are saying don't match.

When we move from a life of doing to a life of being, we realize that every action becomes an opportunity to share love — no matter how simple and how mundane. We don't need to do anything fancy to feel a sense of accomplishment, because we know that the action by itself is just a symbol. The real power is the intention and the essence we hold behind the action. We also learn to stop focusing so much just on what we can see, and to trust what we feel as well.

Dr. Astrid Pujari is a Seattle M.D. with an additional degree as a medical herbalist; she practices at the Pujari Center and teaches as part of the residency programs at Virginia Mason and Swedish/Cherry Hill hospitals. Send questions to apujari@seattletimes.com for possible use in future columns. All information is intended for education and not a substitute for medical advice. Consult your doctor before following any suggestions given here.