Are we masters of our fates, or is Murphy’s Law, that everything than can go wrong will go wrong, set in stone and beyond our mere mortal minds to break? How many times in our lives have we heard or pronounced, “If only I had…”? Many of us feel jinxed, doomed, or otherwise fated to fail. We drink and smoke to excess, eat like there’s no tomorrow, burn the midnight oil for no good reason, and abuse the physiologic machinery lent to us by the Divine with the justification that we are failures anyway, so we might as well buckle up for the ride and enjoy ourselves. Some of us remember our fathers saying, “You will never amount to anything,” and that verbal flaying has remained with us for our entire lives. If only we could think positively and place our minds over matter, we might reap dividends for both our health and wealth, not to mention a good dose of inner tranquility. Positive thinking can not only help us to reverse and write off Murphy’s Law as an old witch’s tale, but also avoid missteps like traveling up snowy slopes in Ruidoso, New Mexico without snow tires, four-wheel drive, or chains, driving all night to Dallas, Texas without sleeping the day or night before (as practiced by the author of this piece), and other forms of personal lunacy that have become the gold standard for those of us who feel destined to fail anyway, good for nothing, or shackled by Murphy’s legacy.
Never underestimate the power of positive thinking on one’s health. Studies have shown that optimistic coronary artery bypass surgery patients not only recover more quickly, but also have fewer complications after surgery than those with a gloomier outlook on life. Optimism is a healing resource every bit as powerful as the myriad of capsules, tablets, injections, potions, and elixirs promulgated by pill pushers in white, the pharmaceutical industry’s juggernaut, and your friendly neighborhood pharmacists, often more concerned with the ring of cash registers than renewing old acquaintances to the tune of, “Hello, I’m not here to buy anything.” Let’s face it, medical outcomes can, indeed, be influenced by mental and emotional expectations. It doesn’t take an advanced degree to figure that one out. Just think of the placebo effect, or the fact that some drugs or treatments with no proven medical benefits, except for a patient’s belief that they will help, have been found to provide satisfactory relief for any number of medical problems. That is not to say that placebos are medical marvels, magic bullets, or gold standards. When we are really sick, we need real medicines and procedures, but positive thinking is an important adjunct that should not be left out of medicine cabinets and little black bags. While no one really understands why a positive attitude can go far to speeding up recovery from surgery or helping to cope with serious illnesses such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, or AIDS, the answer may lie in the mind’s power over the immune system. Studies of healthy first-year law students have found that those who are optimistic about the upcoming year and maintain such optimism through mid-semester, not only have more immune cells but better functioning immune cells than their pessimistic counterparts. So, an organic basis for positive thinking actually does exist. Pessimism, on the other hand, has been found to boost levels of destructive stress hormones in the bloodstream.
While we can’t change the circumstances of our lives, we can certainly change our attitudes toward them. Pain can be used for good. Life-threatening and incapacitating illnesses such as AIDS, cancer, emphysema, heart attack, or liver cirrhosis, to name a few, can be thought of as “gifts,” with very little stretching of the imagination. Those conditions can even empower us, by removing the blinders that hinder us from valuing each day, appreciating moments, getting priorities straight, and successfully reaching goals we never thought possible. The loss of a breast to breast cancer, the loss of a high-powered job due to a disabling illness, or the loss of mobility and perceived freedom due to age or a crippling disorder can be looked upon with despair and fatalism, as we cry in our beer, conclude that we are no good and have been singled out for suffering, fail to see a silver lining, or abandon all hope. On the other hand, “being sick” can be viewed as an opportunity to reach out and grab for all that is distinctly human, and all those missed possibilities we have swept under life’s carpet because we were simply too busy or too tired to view them in the light of reason. So, while the exchange of a breast for less energy devoted to cultivating the perfect body, the exchange of a job for free reign to pursue interests and hobbies, or the exchange of mobility for the freedom to pursue deeper passions may hardly seem fair at the moment of immediate impact, a step backward and pause for reflection will most assuredly convince us of the contrary.
The philosophy of making the best of what we’ve got might not have saved Air Force Capt. Edward A. Murphy, an aerospace engineer at Edwards Air Force Base in California in 1949 for whom the law was named, and who died one dark evening in 1990, while hitchhiking to a gas station, when his car ran out of gas and he was struck from behind by a British tourist who was driving on the wrong side of the road. Even though he was facing traffic and wearing white, Capt. Murphy’s fate was sealed. Not so, however, for the men participating in a 2008 study conducted at the University of Rochester Medical Center, in whom it was found that their belief that they were at lower-than-average risk for cardiovascular disease actually resulted in their experiencing a three times lower incidence of death from heart attacks and strokes.
So, as Murphy rests in peace, those of us still around may do so also.
ã 2010, Albert M. Balesh, M.D. All rights reserved.
