I agree with all of these quotations, but the most important is the last:
Without health life is not life; it is only a state of langour and suffering – an image of death.
Buddha
Health is the soul that animates all the enjoyments of life, which fade and are tasteless without it.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The health of the people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their powers as a state depend.
Benjamin Disraeli
In a disordered mind, as in a disordered body, soundness of health is impossible.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Medicine sometimes snatches away health, sometimes gives it.
Ovid
The first wealth is health.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.
Mahatma Gandhi
He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything.
Thomas Carlyle
A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.
Hippocrates
I have been working tirelessly to teach myself to derive some kind of benefit from my illnesses. In a way, I think it makes me a better person, as I have so much empathy toward some of the people who get little to no support in the world, as healthy people never truly understand the life of the ill and disabled. I’ve also learned how to fight relentlessly, which I think is a useful quality. Alas, living this way is also a hard reality, as the many quotes above illuminate, and also because being unhealthy makes other individuals uncomfortable sometimes, and tends to make for a very isolating existence (as so many of us are stuck in our homes). I’ve been studying Buddhism, self-love, spiritual healing, and more. I have so many self-help books!! I really think that the only way to overcome some of the battles with illness (both physical and mental) is to strengthen the mind, and that is what I am going to do, no matter how long it takes me.
What do you all do to battle the ups and downs of chronic illness without falling into too much of a depression?
xoxo,
Annie
Great collection of quotes. I have so many self help books too, but still looking. Interesting idea about strengthening the mind.
Thank you Alison!
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I fully believe that it is a daily struggle to keep one’s mind in better shape, and it’s one that we don’t always win. I’d be interested to know what self help books you currently own
I really liked The Defining Decade: Why your 20s Matter, even though I had to be careful reading it because I had to keep in mind it’s written for healthy people. It made me realize lately I should read some books for sick people, which I’d been avoiding. So I just finished “Sick and Tired of Feeling Sick and Tired” I’d seen it before but avoided it because I didn’t like the title, but it was really helpful, mostly because it just describes what you go through so well having an invisible illness. Now I’m working on Life Disrupted which is for people in their twenties and thrities with chronic illness. I skipped the first section because it seemed to mostly be about dealing with hospital stays, which never happens to me. I’m looking forward to, (and kind of dreading) the third section about relationships, which has a chapter about having children.
Alison,
I would be scared too. The fact that my odds of being able to have children or it being responsible to have children is basically – do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars.
My long term relationship fell apart as a result of my illness, and it’s going to affect my future too. I just get to be my own best friend I guess. I’m so sorry you’re in the same boat.