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Healthwise: Finding meaning, following your bliss

In medicine and in life, there are times when we ought to pause and ask about the meaning of it all.
Follow your bliss
Your calling is the gift life offers to you, and it is your gift to the world. It is that which infuses your life with meaning.

In medicine and in life, there are times when we ought to pause and ask about the meaning of it all.
Patients and doctors alike can get lost when we react instead of reflect - when we reflexively choose a test, a drug or another intervention in response to a symptom or condition.
When I consulted in hospital ethics, I would be called to assist families making choices about their loved ones' life support in the intensive care unit. An elderly man may have suffered a stroke and lost his ability to understand his circumstances and communicate his wishes. Not being able to safely swallow, he is fed by a nasal feeding tube. After two weeks, he undergoes a procedure to insert the tube directly through the skin overlying his stomach. This is complicated by a wound infection.
Because of his bladder catheter, he requires antibiotics for recurrent urinary tract infections.
Because of his decreased level of consciousness, he develops pneumonia, requires more antibiotics and eventually a ventilator to support his breathing.
Because of numerous antibiotics, he acquires C. difficile diarrhea that is difficult to control because of resistance to multiple antibiotics.
By the time I was consulted, the patient is feverish, obtunded and unaware of his circumstances.
The tests, medications and procedures of modern health care are but tools. Medical ethics guides the individual (or a substitute decision-maker if the patient is incapable of making informed decisions) in choosing the most appropriate tools.
And the purpose of these tools is to support a life that is meaningful and in accordance with the individual's values and desired quality of life.
We can go about the business of life, going through the motions of eating, sleeping, working, shopping, playing and entertaining ourselves, and after some time, we may ask ourselves, "Is that all there is?"
Joseph Campbell's most quoted advice was "Follow your bliss."
Live the life that you were uniquely meant to live. Live meaningfully. Live passionately.
I wonder how many of us really do that. I suspect that most of us just settle and accept a life that is good enough rather than a life that is great. After all, we're working hard enough just to keep up. Why risk everything on a great adventure?
We can get side tracked living the life we did not choose but just fell into, or we can pursue goals that are not ours but rather dictated by our families, peers and commercial culture.
What is your bliss?
It is that which brings you joy. When you are engaged in what you were meant to do, you enter the zone. You forget your sense of time and your sense of self as you become a part of something bigger.
It is the answer to the call of life. It begins with an openness to life and the opportunities it offers you, to others and their needs, and to your own experience of being alive. It calls for the intention to make this your priority, and it requires daily action.
The compass by which I measure my actions is this. Am I brought closer or further from my true purpose?
Your calling is the gift life offers to you, and it is your gift to the world. It is that which infuses your life with meaning. Don't settle for anything less.

Dr. Davidicus Wong is physician lead of the Burnaby Division of Family Practice and works at the PrimeCare Medical Centre. His Healthwise column appears regularly in this paper. You can read more about achieving your positive potential at davidicuswong.wordpress.com.