by Anne Malatt, Ophthalmologist, Australia
What is the difference between care and cure?
Both words originally came from the same word – isn’t that curious?
The Latin noun ‘cura’, meaning ‘care’, became the verb ‘curare’, meaning ‘take care of’ and then the Old French ‘curer’, meaning ‘cure’.
The original sense of the word was ‘care, concern, responsibility’, particularly in a spiritual sense, but in late Middle English the meanings ‘medical care’ and ‘successful medical treatment’ arose, and hence ‘remedy’.
Interestingly, curare is also a type of poison, as are many medical treatments, when not used according to directions (and sometimes even when they are!).
Modern medicines are powerful, and sometimes a helpful treatment can become a harmful poison, especially if the dose is too high. Paracetamol is a great painkiller, but it can also kill liver cells, if taken in excess. Chemotherapy drugs are designed to kill cancer cells, but they can kill healthy cells as well, hence their side effects.
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So how has the meaning of the words ‘care’ and ‘cure’ changed, and why?
In ancient times, medicine offered true care. We knew that connection with people mattered, that what we ate affected us, and that there was a true and simple way to live. Illness and disease were seen as a reflection of the way we were living, and an opportunity to make true change.
As we became more scientific, and developed herbs, pills and potions, and skills and techniques – like anaesthetics and surgery – we became taken with the idea that we could fix ailments, cut lumps out, have power over life and death, and generally play God. With this seems to have come the notion that we could fix illness and disease, and then go back to the same way of living that made us ill in the first place.
And herein lies the irresponsibility.
Now, we see illness and disease as a nuisance, an inconvenience, to be fixed, gotten rid of, cured, so we can get back to doing what we were doing before. And more and more we have come to place the responsibility for this onto our doctors and healers, and less and less onto ourselves and our way of life.
Our physicians have also become more irresponsible, choosing to focus on the cure, the quick fix, rather than taking care of the way they live, and then reflecting that living way to us, inspiring us to learn to live it to.
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So, what do we mean when we say we care?
And what happens to us when we try to care?
Most of us say that we care about our friends, family, jobs, cars, possessions, and ourselves. But we have come to associate ‘care’ with trying, being careful, being cautious even. This is not true care. We ‘care’ too much to hurt people’s feelings, to be honest with them, to tell them the truth. And we ‘care’ about ourselves too much to say it as it is, to deal with people’s reactions, to not be liked, to get it ‘wrong’, to say and do what is needed, rather than what people want to hear.
What happens to our bodies when we are ‘careful’ in a way that is not true? We tend to tense up, contract, and hold our muscles hard. We tend to go into our heads, worrying about what we should do, what we should say, how we should be. And while we are busy in our heads, we are not at ease in our bodies.
What happens when we are not at ease? Our muscles are tense, our movements are not fluid and flowing, our minds are elsewhere, and in this state, accidents, incidents and injuries are more likely to happen.
So is it possible that true care is not what we think it is?
Could true care be developing a relationship with our bodies?
Could true care be as simple as feeling yourself in your body – from the top of your head to the tips of your fingers and the ends of your toes, and being aware of your whole body as you move, in everything that you do?
Could true care be a willingness to feel what is there to be felt, and to honour our feelings, to be aware of what is truly going on within and around us?
Could true care be a commitment to making our every move – our every thought, word and action – loving and caring, for ourselves and for others?
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And what do we mean by ‘cure’?
The word ‘cure’ has come to mean:
- To relieve of the symptoms of a disease or condition
- To eliminate a disease or condition with medical treatment
- To solve a problem
But ‘cure’ can also apply to meat and skins, whereby we render them ‘fixed’ in such a way that we preserve them, so they do not rot, and can be used for longer. They may last longer, but this process takes the life out of them. We can apply this to the trajectory of our lives.
We live life in cycles. These can be short and sweet (or not) or long but drawn out and flat, or long and round, rich and full, depending on the quality we bring to them, the quality of our living way.
Looking to fix and cure may prolong our lives, but it does not necessarily enhance the quality of them. But bringing that quality brings a depth and richness to life, no matter how long and short it is, and even if we are confronted with illness and disease.
Do we want a life of richness, of quality, irrespective of the length of it, or do we want to prolong life at all costs?
That is the dilemma we are faced with in modern medicine today – we have the ability to ‘cure’ all sorts of ills, but with what quality are people living, and what is the level of care with which we are delivering these services?
To care or to cure – can we reunite the two and deliver true health care once again?
Read more:
Medicine and Serge Benhayon 
It’s been so great to read this today, it’s really highlighted beliefs I hold about caring for others which are harmful to myself, and that care itself is first and foremost a quality that begins with how I am with myself before it can be offered to others.
We have accepted as the ‘norm’ living from outside our selves instead of living from within, hence we have lost that deep connection with ourselves and with our innermost. Thus the seeking of solutions and quick fixes to alleviate ourselves. It’s clearly not working with such increase of illness and dis-ease. As you have shared Anne, we need to connect with our bodies and reconnect to our inner knowing to truly care for ourselves and others.
“Could true care be a commitment to making our every move – our every thought, word and action – loving and caring, for ourselves and for others?” – great definition of what true care is.
When we try to play God and fix what has not been okay in the first place we make our lives about surviving instead of being the God that we are and live a life full of purpose and thus true care and cure.
It is not caring to give children, or ourselves, sugar laden sweets to eat but to care and love them and ourselves enough to learn that this is harmful to the body.
Curing meat takes the life out of them; this makes so much sense—wanting to protect or preserve something to a state of non-decay or preservation ( what we want as a selfish reason) has already suffocated it—including people, this has been seen so much in parent and children relationship.,
The meaning of care has become being cautious and hence what we define as careful today is not true care. Words have become so distorted and corrupted that no wonder we have to feel for ourselves what Truth is.
Such a great blog Anne, to be posed this questions what is the difference and to truly ponder on what each one offers us. Life for most and it certainly was for me before I meet Serge Benhayon was all about the cure to pick us up and sort us out but we avoid the part where it is actually the self-care and self-responsibility that is truly required for a vital and health body.
Care can bring about a great cure – we can care for ourselves ever so deeply that whatever ill is there on our chest, can be dissolved – this is the true cure.
If we truly cared about our family, friends, and work colleagues, would we not be more honest and supportive and tell them the truth no matter how hard it may be to say or to watch them take it in, because that is true care, we have diluted the meaning of it to make it more comfortable for ourselves.
I find it interesting as long before I became a student of Universal Medicine I knew I could not be inspired by a reflection that was not living love hence my commitment and dedication to learning, developing and living The Way of the Livingness and what I know is truth as presented and lived by Serge Benhayon.
Very interesting how ‘cure’ and ‘care’ come from the same word and somehow ended up with two different things. How we fragment words to suit the level of responsibility we are prepared to take is just amazing. How simple everything must have been in the beginning.
“Could true care be as simple as feeling yourself in your body?” So simple – and so true. When I began to care for my body more deeply – and with love – my world changed.
Isnt it interesting how our attitudes have changed so much over time in relation to ‘Care and Cure’? As a human race we have become so arrogant that we now believe and also expect that when we get ill, because there are treatments that can ‘cure’ so many ailments now then we ‘should’ get better without having to do anything about it ourselves. How far from the truth we have come, when there was a time (and thankfully because of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine many are re-understanding that we still can) when we lived in connection with our bodies and therefore were responsible about the way we lived and took true care of ourselves. This is a great example of how words and our understanding of them and life in general, get so bastardised over time.
Care is the catalyst for the cure.
So perhaps it would be fair to say that we placed ‘cure’ over ‘care’ the moment we started to seek outward for healing and put all our attention on finding that ‘perfect pill’ that will ‘cure us of all our symptoms’ without considering that the way we live and the choices we make also have an impact on our body and its vitality. In order to reunite both care and cure, we first need to take and honest look at the way we are living and take responsibility for it.
There is an obvious opportunity here to embrace the responsibility we have to take care of ourselves and to see beyond function to the potential to live a life that is full, vital, engaged and in relationship with the big picture that we are all a part of. I really like the bit about the physicians’ responsibility too and would add that I often spot situations where health care practitioner’s actually ‘relieve’ patients of their responsibility – this I feel is part of their identification with needing to ‘fix’ and make things ‘better’ – which contributes to the narrower view of providing quick solutions with no call to change the patterns/behaviours that lead to illness.
“And we ‘care’ about ourselves too much to say it as it is, to deal with people’s reactions, to not be liked, to get it ‘wrong’, to say and do what is needed, rather than what people want to hear.” – This sentence entails a great learning that I have only recently embraced, as I noticed how growing up with parents that constantly were arguing in a very emotional and dramatic way had affected me in the sense that I avoided conflicts at all costs as a teenager and an adult. In this, I also avoided standing up for the truth that I felt in my heart if it would ruffle any feathers and cause someone to not like me.
“Could true care be a commitment to making our every move – our every thought, word and action – loving and caring, for ourselves and for others?” A very interesting discussion here Anne on the meaning of true care. It really highlights how if we don’t take true care of ourselves, how can we truly take care of another?
Sometimes it can be more caring to not give someone something that they want, than to give them that which you know will stall their evolution. A lot of time when we seek the care of others, we are not seeking true care at all but simply to be indulged in the very thing that is holding us back. This is where the poison of sympathy enters the equation as opposed to a deep understanding of where the person is at and what will best support them.
I really like the focus you’ve brought to both care and cure. It’s made me consider what I care about. Do I say something that is there to be said to support someone but I know they’ll probably not like it or do I care more about avoiding people’s reactions? I’m learning to listen to what’s needed from a feeling and not a mental exercise, and support myself to do so – this may include getting support to not be affected by another’s reaction.
There is a lot to contemplate in this as it exposes modern life and the way we currently think. We are living in a way where we override the simplicity of life and in this we complicate or live a very hectic life and don’t want to connect to a different rhythm, one that allows a greater flow. So in this we look for the ‘cure’ to keep us going on this same track, instead of taking the pit stop and re-evaluating everything.
With the advent of modern medicine cure has turned into manage, so managing a disease or a condition. Care has become something that is functional and is based around the tasks we perform for another. As you say Anne there is so much more to both words especially considering their same origins.
And by diminishing them as we have we miss out on the depth and richness of these words and what they offer us to learn.
We do tend to look for a quick fix when we get sick so that we can go back to our ways before we got sick but maybe the body does not want to return to the old ways. Looking at our lives before we got sick would be a useful exercise to see what had contributed towards the illness in the first place – after all, sickness does not just happen, there is always a root cause.
With true care we are more able to heal the underlying cause of the disharmony we have created in our body.
We often look for a ‘quick fix’ or a ‘cure’ when we want to avoid taking care of ourselves and/or responsibility for ourselves. But taking great care of ourselves is the greatest gift we can ever give ourselves.
Yes and when we do take true care, we start to resource the rich learning that life offers. When we do the quick fix and solution way, we are constantly glossing over the opportunities that are always there to deepen our understanding of ourselves and life.
The understanding and the experience of quality in life is a paradigm shift that is essential for us all to know and experience… Otherwise life on earth will be unsustainable.
That unsustainability you speak of Chris is fast approaching, if not already here. We are spending much more money that we realise on healthcare and that is definitely unsustainable.
A great reminder Anne of how we now live in a society that expects to be fixed and are reluctant to take any form of responsibility for the illnesses we face, what if we understood that true care means more about how we live, adding on an extra layer when it’s cold, going to bed early to support the body, changing the way we eat, all these things bring a greater quality to our life.
In the word ‘care’ I feel a commitment to having a relationship, and ‘cure’ somehow feels to be a solution that is more immediate. It’s very interesting how one thing got fragmented and ended up having two words to describe each element, and because now there are two separate words, we are missing out the potency of what that original one had to offer.
It is true that we have developed a way of life that causes injury, lack of wellbeing and illness and disease for which we then turn to our governments and medical carers to fix. And the medical system is now so focussed on curing the symptoms that very few are asking the right questions any more, questions about our lifestyle choices and our quality of movement.
It is like we have all chosen the same blinkers, a limited view on life that gives us permission to stay in a comfy narrow existence. This is not it and if we are prepared to glance up and out we will get glimpses of a life so rich, full and inspiring and this is a life that we can choose to be part of.
What if the cure lies in the amount and level (quality) of care we give ourselves? And this cure not being a cure of the symptoms but of the root cause of the illness or disease.
It makes sense we want instant relief from symptoms of our illness and disease. However we don’t often want to take responsibility and look at our quality of living that has contributed to it.
Wanting life to return to the way it was before the illness or disease is a very powerful force that I can see is prevalent in societies everywhere, where in fact much of the medical world that is available is trying its hardest to meet the needs of a population where the majority want to seek relief and not true healing.
“Could true care be a willingness to feel what is there to be felt, and to honour our feelings, to be aware of what is truly going on within and around us?” This is a great question and I would say that the answer is a clear YES. To truly care we have to care for the All, which includes ourselves.
Yes, I agree, and this very simply presents us with an invitation to build our relationships with ourselves as we hold the bigger picture of the part we play in all of our evolution.
There cannot be any true care if we do not have a very deep relationship with our bodies.
‘What happens when we are not at ease? ‘ today I was contemplating the expression ‘take it easy’ meaning to put your feet up, relax etc. but realised just how this can be applied to any situation. For example we can still be working in a pressured environment and be taking it easy in how we treat ourselves and the fact that we have everything that we need to deal with any situation and it is only when we choose it to be so that it becomes a challenge or a struggle.
To take deep care is something that is deeply lacking in society at the moment, the question of what then happens next is interesting, for me I felt a deep healing of many things in my life that I have been hurt by. Had i chosen the cure I would have chosen not to deal with what was really behind how I felt.
It is interesting in the current times and what it means to take care of ourselves is so far from what it used to mean. Even twenty years ago there seemed to be a stronger understanding that we had to take care of ourselves. Today it seems like it doesn’t matter and you can get drugs or go to the doctors and they will sort you out. Being accountable for our own health is an essential step in society for the rates of illness and disease to start to change.
Yes, people tend to look outside of themselves for a cure – without any thought that their lifestyle could perhaps be contributing to their predicament. Doctors – trained in the medical model – get caught up too, tho a brave few are attempting to change that paradigm.
There’s so much more to us than just being functional, not that function isn’t important but if we focus purely on that (in terms of seeking a quick fix) then we negate the being part of us and the opportunity we have to continually deepen our understanding of ourselves, life and all of us.
For me true care is knowing that I am more than just a physical body. Knowing this allows me to understand that illness is a manifestation of a disharmonious way of living the whole of me.
As with all things in life it is quality that matters and not quantity – this is especially so when it comes to our life span.
To me this highlights that we need to make it about energy. Another (e.g. doctor) can learn the science of the body to help and support us with medicine but both the patient and professional make it first about energy and how the patient has lived it gives us a whole bigger and truer picture to work with and the patient cannot avoid taking responsibility for their health and how they have lived which has led them to an illness or dis-ease.
“Do we want a life of richness, of quality, irrespective of the length of it, or do we want to prolong life at all costs?” This is such an important question Anne and one that too often gets overlooked at the expense of our health. Our quality of life surely has to be paramount over and above prolonging it for the sake of staying alive longer, in any situation.
I also feel that the relationship we have with our body is the foundation we all require for maintaining us! It beats running for the cliff and patching ourselves up as we go and never missing a step!
A cure is great but useless in the long term unless care is taken to address the underlying conditions.
True care starts with building an honest relationship with our body and to observe what care in the bastardised version in ‘careful’ is doing with our body or ask where are we when we are ‘careful’. ‘Could true care be a commitment to making our every move – our every thought, word and action – loving and caring, for ourselves and for others?’ Which means we have to be present in ourselves to love and care for ourselves and equally for others.
Care is saying it as it is, it is being as we are, it is not holding back and not reacting, it is taking responsibility, it is observing and respecting our needs, it is accepting of ourselves and always go back and never feeling it less when we have diverted.
This is beautiful Anne, it is very true that care and cure is to be the fullness of who we are, say it as it is, be as we simply are, there is a deep satisfaction and fulfilment when we are that.
If we honestly begin to understand and accept that illness and disease is a direct reflection of how we are living today and the accumulation of how we have lived all our yesterday’s we would also accept our responsibility in the necessary healing process to help correct that past.
It is true Anne quality of life is far more enriching than the quantity of years lived. We now expect the medical profession to fix us no matter what, when in some circumstances it would be better to let go and allow our body to heal in the way it knows best. If we could accept that the cycles we live mean that we come back again would we be so worried about clinging to life at all costs.
It is interesting how we often look at developing relationships with others but don’t take stock of how true health begins with having a relationship with ourselves.
I find it interesting how we hand ourselves over to be cared for, when we have a choice to care for ourselves first, the more we build our own relationship with our body the easier it is to know how to care for ourselves.
I love the way you describe the difference between being ‘careful’ and ‘caring’. Sometimes we are being too careful in our own best interest to care about others. To truly care is to care fully, no matter what that means.
“In ancient times, medicine offered true care. We knew that connection with people mattered, that what we ate affected us, and that there was a true and simple way to live. Illness and disease were seen as a reflection of the way we were living, and an opportunity to make true change.” We need to get back to this true caring of people and treat them as individuals, not an ‘illness’ or disease. When nursing – way back now – doctors would talk about the cancer case in bed 5, rather than naming the person in bed 5.- a total depersonalising of that patient.
I loved what you shared about being careful actually creating a concentration and therefore a tension which leads to non flowing movements and potentially accidents or injuries… this is another great reason to stay in the flow of life, feeling your body and moving in honour of that.
This is essential for all of humanity to clock that it is in fact the way we live, the responsibility that we take for our own health and wellbeing, taking care of ourselves and how this approach is diminishing the fact that we need a cure, because when we are not well and things are disharmonious at least we walk into the doctor’s room at the beginning with a willingness to honour and look after ourselves and not expect someone to fix us. The national health service would be a very different story than it is today.
‘Do we want a life of richness, of quality, irrespective of the length of it, or do we want to prolong life at all costs?’ Most people say they are going for quality of life but when it truly comes to a point of serious illness and disease their attachment with human life and not wanting to die is there and makes that they search for a ‘cure’ by the medical system so we could say what is their idea about a life of richness, of quality, is it truly wanting to be responsible and caring?
Beautiful blog Anne. There is definitely a difference between caring and truly caring, a world of difference and in order to truly care for another we have to be able to truly care for ourselves first. So is our capacity for true care then linked with the consistency in which, and the depth of which, we care for ourselves? And if so let’s begin to attend to this at whatever level we are at even if it is only in one small action in our day
Medication offers us all three things in one; care, cure and sometimes harm too, through side effects or eventual withdrawal symptoms. This is why it’s so important to look at how as a society we are using them, and what our purpose is for taking the large volume of medication that we do. Out of these three things, which are we seeking? And what is our own definition of each?
‘We talked and Serge simply supported me to make my own choice, free of judgement or investment.’ My husband and I have had two such conversations with Serge regarding financial matters and found it to be exactly the same for us. It’s extraordinarily powerful (and rare) to experience an exchange like this – totally free of imposition and agenda.
What an interesting distortion of meaning that has played out over time on the journey from ‘care’ to ‘cure’. This steady erosion seems to have kept pace with our propensity to turn away from what we once knew – from the truth of our bodies and true care, right down to today’s quick fix. A rapid and successful reunion is definitely called for!
The origin of the words ‘cure’ and ‘care’ is the same. It seems that currently cure has more to do with the physicality and care with the way we look after it. The body and its quality. Would it be possible that those words and its origin are offering to us the way back home? The way back to true health? Maybe we need to reconnect to its union inside of us, to have access to the answers we need as humanity to cope with the huge increase of diseases.
It is interesting that we must take care to cure when we take medicine so that we take what is needed for our own bodies and within what is recommended.
It is so true that we have gone into fix it mode with our illness and disease, thereby missing a wonderful opportunity to truly value the stop moment on offer and consider why we got ill in the first place.
To link these two things – Care and Healing, is a complete game-changer Anne. It takes so much of the need to know things and have the ‘answers’ out of the equation and brings back the responsibility to the practitioner for how they choose to live, hence affecting the quality of care they are then able to offer another.
Aiming for a quick fix can sometimes disregard the opportunity for true healing which in effect can be a band-aid for a tumour.
Thank you Anne, for presenting us with the opportunity to consider and discern the quality of care we are choosing to live with. I am discovering more and more that true care does comes naturally, by way of the relationship I hold with my body, as such is guided by the loving connection I develop with my body and being. The willingness to being honest about and accepting responsibility for the choices I am making and how they feel in my body, has been paramount to understanding and experiencing how to truly care for myself.
Gosh! Even in medicine, the definition of word has impacted greatly on the quality of the final result. If we truly knew what these words meant we would approach medicine in a completely different way as we would see the lesser quality of how one chooses to live as an equal part of the illness.
Thank you again Anne… And the reunion of these two is really the only path open to humanity if it is going to evolve out of the next hundred years… The statistics on the health of humanity certainly support this.
Anne you are a breath of fresh air in a profession that has been tainted by the strict regimes and bureaucracies.
We have totally reduced the meaning of consensus to an agreement of our minds, ignoring the whole body intelligence and wisdom that is available to us. Our felt sense is one that comes from the body and our inner-most, not from our mind’s interpretation of our five senses.
No doubt about it!, care more and perhaps we have the cure to what has put us in dis-ease and our ills.
This is a snapshot of what is happening to many of the words in our vocabulary altered to fit in with a changing society that we are expected to changed with and ‘change’ as determined by the environment outside of us, outside of the truth our body communicates everyday. The body is a true marker and will always bring with it’s communication energetic responsibility and energetic integrity – the question is do we listen?
There is much learning in illness and disease. As you mention Anne we have a choice to have a rewarding life that may be short or we may instead have a long life being kept going through medication but what is the quality of that life./
Our next greatest advance in medicine will not be by way of finding the next great cure, but by embracing the role the individual plays in prevention.
In the past we used to intuitively know what to take when we were sick, which herb to take and how it would support us, this was a natural thing to do and was seen as taking care of ourselves and being aware of what the body needs, especially in times of feeling unwell. Today we have people to take care of us, such as the medical profession and in handing over our own well being to them we have negated our own responsibility in taking true care for ourselves.
When we say we care for certain people there can be felt an exclusion as the care is there for some in particular as they are more important than others. True care is there for all equally.
Now, we see illness and disease as a nuisance, an inconvenience, to be fixed, gotten rid of, cured, so we can get back to doing what we were doing before. This is exactly how I used to think before Universal Medicine and choosing be much more body aware, and bring in self loving and caring choices for myself. In the past I used to hate it when I was sick and would get frustrated with my body for being sick. Now, I have learnt to be much more tender and listen to my body when it speaks.
“Do we want a life of richness, of quality, irrespective of the length of it, or do we want to prolong life at all costs?” I have a feeling that if we asked everyone this question, many would go for quality over quantity however there would still be many who would prefer the length of life option. There is such an investment in the individual life that we think if we live as long as possible, we might be able to turn things around and be successful or happy. But this exposes the deep irresponsibility we accept as normal, for if we are always thinking “tomorrow I’ll sort myself out” or “I’ll do it in my own time” we are stubbornly defying the fact that we could actually take responsibility for ourselves today, now, and start to end the suffering and rot that we as one humanity have accepted as the way it is.
It is interesting that we can get really sick, find a cure or a fix and then go back to living the same way that led to us getting ill in the 1st place and yet we call ourselves an intelligent species! It is something worth pondering on as I know I have certainly fallen for this many times.
Thank you Anne, it’s a fascinating exploration of ‘care’ and ‘cure’ and how those things have influenced our approach to good health and to illness and disease. What I have learnt from my involvement with Universal Medicine is how powerful the effect of my self care is on my health and wellbeing, and it’s something that I can continue to deepen and support myself with by listening to and honouring my body, and observing the results of my choices.
Interesting that in the evolution of the meaning of these two words we have lost sight of the original intention and so many are now hiding behind what the medical profession can do for us rather than taking responsibility for our own health.
Great question Anne as is your answer within this question;
“Could true care be a commitment to making our every move – our every thought, word and action – loving and caring, for ourselves and for others?”
Could true care and love be the ultimate cure to our deepest dis-ease – the disconnection from our selves and each other?
Brilliant question Anne – and I love what you say about responsibility too. Working in Social Care I have often pondered whether as a society, we have ‘absolved’ ourselves of responsibility for our elderly and vulnerable through the creation of social services – and likewise for our health through our health services. In my view we urgently need to re-evaluate our own responsibility and see that we need to work together with the support of our health and social services rather than see them and the ‘cure all’ for our problems.
I know when I am aware and consider the quality of every move that I make, in every moment of the day, I feel truly cared for in a very deep way. No matter the symptom or situation that may arise, nothing can overwhelm or override the feeling I have inside. It’s a challenge to live this way, no doubt, and something I am learning so much more about right now. But the true ‘solution’ is so clear – to make every moment about honouring Love. Thank you Anne for caring to share this great medicine here with us all.
Anne as I read your blog I could not help but feel your commitment to true care and be inspired by your words.
What a great exposé of these two words, really we have moved away from our wisdom that was lived in ancient times and have become more functional in the arrogance of relying on the mind. It just shows we are returning to our known lived way so in that sense it is just letting go of habits and ways that we have adopted that are not true.
When we look around at our world and at life, we have to admit that the cures that we have are not working at all. They just delay and stave off ‘the inevitable’ – and is this truly what’s right? The uncomfortable thing that you present Anne is the fact that it all starts with the question of whether we truly care. If you asked me I would say that I do, but when I look back at my day today, boy did I say, do, think and behave in a way that wasn’t caring at all. So when it comes to refreshing medicine, it seems clear to me, we don’t need to look far to find what the first steps we need to take are – the answer lives in our everyday life.
So often, we do feel it is an inconvenience to fall sick, or we find it a nuisance as it interferes or stops what we wanted to be doing. And hence we learn to push through, soldier on or to seek a quick fix or a short term remedy to take away the symptoms. Ah to be symptom free! But in fact it is the symptoms that are the body’s way of speaking and of letting us know that there is something that is out of balance, out of whack and that we have not been respectful of the cycles of nature. Our real medicine lies in our ability to return to the cycles of nature, to come back to our natural way of being, one that is in line with a true respect and care for our body and the All that we come from. A deviance from this All in our way of living, can only result in a ‘correction’ such as an illness or disease, not as a punishment but as a way to bring us back to our Essence – hence in truth any illness or disease really is a blessing and not a curse, a true gift rather than an inconvenience or a nuisance. And this is so important to realise, for once we know this deep within, then a ‘cure’ is not an option, and our only choice is accepting the healing on offer.
And I must add here too, that the true meaning of the word cure has been changed away from care, as Anne has so beautifully presented. And in the same way our true way of healing has been walked miles away from to now become a simple cure rather than a true return. But it does lie in our hands to bring the true meaning of words back, and so too it lies in our hands to bring true life back, using illness and disease as a guide when needed.
Anne this is beautiful – it is the essence of true medicine and it is for us to bring it back to a lived reality again: “In ancient times, medicine offered true care. We knew that connection with people mattered, that what we ate affected us, and that there was a true and simple way to live. Illness and disease were seen as a reflection of the way we were living, and an opportunity to make true change.”
How far have we truly progressed with health care? Really we have strayed away from true connection with our body and taking responsibility for our own healing, to a reckless attitude of seeking a magic pill to take away any ailment we have, so we can continue indulging in a loveless lifestyle.
The Latin root of words often reveals their true meaning as such words were formed when what was being spoken, was also being lived. That is, the words of these times were not subject to the gross misinterpretations that today’s languages have suffered in the sense that we say one thing but do another.
I love what you are presenting for us to consider here Anne, it makes perfect sense that ‘care’ and ‘cure’ were interwoven, as does it make sense that the separation of these words indicates the separation within us when we seek to cure at a purely functional level, void of true care. Indeed it is the lack of true care on our part as the patient in the first place that sets us on the path to wanting/needing to be ‘cured’ and expecting the medical professionals to do our dirty work for us. True medicine is knowing how to live with deep regard and care for ourselves and all others and by virtue of this lived way and due to the fact we are not causing harm to ourselves or anyone else on a daily basis, we also embody the ‘cure’. Preventative medicine at its finest.
This is an amazing blog sharing so much wisdom on the state of our health and medicine today and our responsibility with the way we live in this all. The quality is everything of our lives our movements and the care and medicine we live and changes everything if we choose this as our living way.
Such a wonderful blog Anne, I didn’t know the difference between ‘to take care of’ and to cure and the fact that they came from the same route. What I feel clearly reading this is how we’ve arrogantly assumed we can play God and hence become fixated on curing but not really addressing the lack of care, in fact in our curing in many cases we compound it, so in effect set it, and there is no growth or quality in that. So you now have me considering am I looking for cures or being taking care, the first for me represents relief whereas the second indicates a real deepening with me and my body and a willingness to let go what does not support me in how I live – responsibility in other words.
Great point, Marika! It’s so easy to see it the other way – a burden, annoyance and something that slows us down. But it happens for a reason. Appreciate that.
Your post got me thinking about how some people push the limits of their bodies – athletes, for example. How someone with ligament damage, broken bones or a concussion can have ‘fast track’ treatment to get them back in the game. Now on the one hand this is a medical marvel – how incredible we have become at fixing our broken bodies. But on the other hand, there is much for the broken person to learn if they are willing – that the cure first comes with care for oneself.
I was with some people recently where a man was complaining about the medical doctors because in his opinion they did not know what they were doing. And when he next saw them he was going to tell them straight that he wanted it sorted so he could go back to living his life, his way. This is what many of us want, to be cured or fixed so that we can carry on with the life that got us sick in the first place. This doesn’t make any sense to me.
A cure, while it can bring physical relief to any suffering or discomfort being experienced, can also be a great expense to the body in the long run. The reason being is that what caused the suffering in the first place continues even though the symptoms may disappear. Addressing the cause by making changes to the way we live is the best way to make any lasting changes.
A cure is something we have come to expect as a quick fix. Even thinking about this it feels void of care. To do anything quickly so we can get on with something else involves lack of care.
It’s true that when we are careful to not rock the boat or upset the status quo we are often not being or acting congruent with the truth. Is it really helping anyone in the long run if we ignore the truth in order to keep the peace? We are just stalling for time and in the meantime that untruth is growing and will come back again often with more force and thus potentially more difficult to stem.
The fact that this post has been written, that there is (again) the concept that illness, disease and ailment is a moment for us to heal and take greater care of ourselves, can be life changing for all.
Reading this blog post came at the right time for me, particularly as I’ve been feeling like I don’t want to rock the boat in groups regarding my food choices. An inspiring read, thank you.
It’s like we are all perpetually looking for cures, everyday of our lives. ‘If only I could get x to go away’. Yet do we ever stop and consider that care may be what we truly need? Your words here Anne emphasise how there is no limit or end to the care we can bring to being us. This deepening is what we are here to develop in our life. It is never ending – infinite – so there is no short cut fix that works.
There is much food for thought here Anne! Thank you for taking the time to share your wisdom with us Anne. I agree totally with you that it starts with us being responsible for self nurturing.
Brilliant Anne, your words remind me of all those conversations I have had where I hear someone has a difficulty and try and fix that. What comes accross so strongly in your words is how if I just listened, connected and felt the Love that is there between us all, the other person would receive all the care, understanding and support in the world. And looking closer to home, I see how all this applies to my relationship with me. No need to fix when there is tender quality.
Life is medicine, true care and cure is part of this, being responsible for our own health, making choices that are honest and true to our bodies. A come back of true care and cure in the healthcare system would support everyone to take care in the original meaning of the word.
There is a false belief that a longer life is always a better life, but that is not necessarily true. A long life can mean a myriad of things, it could be many full cycles or it could be one long flat cycle without much movement. But what is the purpose of life? Is it to build success and recognition despite everything within the finite years we are here or is there more to life than this? The truth of this answer will determine what beliefs we allow ourselves to buy into.
It is great how you bring care and cure together here Anne. So often we think about a successful outcome as being getting rid of symptoms of a disease and this is then called a cure – the condition that held us back from living our lives and was a nuisance is no longer there and so we can return to our life just as it was. Yet this is a far cry from what is on offer to us when we are unwell. Illness gives us an opportunity to look at how we have been living up to that point, our relationship with self care and the choices we have to deepen the connection we have with our body.
Thank you Anne. Many of us have become very careless with the true meaning of care.
Spot on the mark with this blog. It is interesting to hear the discussions that are often shared about an illness or disease and how ‘it’ was caught in time with an operation or a medical support of some type to prevent death. We rarely stop to ponder on the root of the illness and what care was given to the body in order for this health issue to arise. It goes back to the quick fix or band aid solution model that keeps pumping our medical system into bankruptcy as we are not looking at the true care factor that comes from making simple loving choices every day
A cure on its own masks the lack of care we had to contract the original illness!
A very insightful blog Anne, thank you.
“In ancient times, medicine offered true care. We knew that connection with people mattered, that what we ate affected us, and that there was a true and simple way to live. Illness and disease were seen as a reflection of the way we were living, and an opportunity to make true change.” So simple and yet it has been forgotten the truth we have lived before. The answers are within us and if only we stop to connect within, the depth of our wisdom and knowing will show us the way.
I agree what is truly caring and what is being ‘careful’, ‘We ‘care’ too much to hurt people’s feelings, to be honest with them, to tell them the truth. And we ‘care’ about ourselves too much to say it as it is, to deal with people’s reactions, to not be liked, to get it ‘wrong’, to say and do what is needed, rather than what people want to hear.’ Most people really want the truth of the matter, even if at times it is difficult to hear.
Many years ago when I was a young girl, I recall the local doctors as being very caring and they took a keen interest in getting to know the whole family and gather their medical history. Due to their genuine dedication and high level of care they were highly respected and often regarded as a close family friend that people trusted and could confide in. Also home visits were high on their agenda as an essential part of their care for those who were very ill, so they did not have to exhaust themselves getting out of bed and having to be taken to the doctor’s surgery. Nowadays the medical profession has become ‘big business’ and they cram patients in, only allowing 15 mins for each appointment and no breaks in between for the doctors to catch their breath (apart from a small lunch break).
Doctors’ waiting rooms are usually jam-packed with sick people all wanting to be cured as quickly as possible without any expectations of true care being part of the hurried process before they call “NEXT”. I love the old way.
The irresponsibility entered when we separated the cure from the care in the sense that we cannot ever truly heal if we are not first nurturing ourselves. Void of this we search desperately for a cure that will relieve us of the ill way we have chosen to move without ever wanting to address what caused us to move in this way in the first place. That is to say, with little care or discernment to what source of energy we align to (is it love, or is it not?) there comes with that package no true cure because the energetic root cause of the dis-ease has not been addressed. I love this blog Anne!
Yes brilliant Anne, we cannot hope to offer anything by way of ‘cure’ unless we are first prepared to care, which mean of course we must care for ourselves first and foremost. It is no surprise we have ended up so lost when it comes to healing, cure and true care. Once we lose ourselves and our own self-care, we are lost to the true application and possibility of healing and true care.
This is a brilliant article Anne! Several elderly people close to me have been ‘cured’ so to speak, however the quality of their lives has been reduced and I often observe how much life has been extended at great cost. I wonder about the ethics of keeping people alive into very old age just because a cure was possible 20 years ago. There is much more discussion to be had on this topic.
Just like prescription medicine, the way we live can can be a cure to what ails us at our very core, depending on the level of responsibility we choose to engage with in our own healing.
Great insights into care and cure and how we can bring them together again; cure as we use it now feels quite linear and driven and having true care be brought back into the process of looking after ourselves and each other cannot but be an enrichment and joy.
It is interesting to read that in ancient times they would read and heed the body when it came to the symptoms of the body and then advise accordingly. Whereas today we try to mask over the symptoms with strong painkillers and continue in the same ill momentum. You would think that after all of these years we would have progressed and not regressed.
It certainly sounds like we took far more responsibility for our health and wellbeing in ancient times.
The more we have moved away from true care for ourselves and developed illnesses and conditions based on our lack of loving self-regard, the more we have come to rely on cures – the medical pills, potions and interventions we use to ‘fix what ails us’. Returning to the simple truths we once knew and lived by seems like the way to truly effect a return from cure to care.
I also can see how supportive what you have shared here is to each of us in our daily lives. I know for myself, that when someone I know is ill or out of sorts I have found myself in cure mode, i.e. wanting to make them better, to fix things for them. I have come to feel how much of a dis-service this to them as in doing so, I am not being caring and offering the truth and honesty that may be needed, the care of them as a person.
i would love to see this article in the waiting rooms of doctors. Knowing that to offer for reading a truth such as this, that the doctors working from the surgery have behind their ability to offer a cure, a care and understanding for the person.
I love the analogy of the curing of the meat along with ‘Looking to fix and cure may prolong our lives, but it does not necessarily enhance the quality of them’. So true. We love a bandaid…something with evidence that says we did something about something…but do we ever stop to consider why we did it, or rather why we needed to do it in the first place?
I am sure I have read this before but today it feels like the first time. I love your analogy “Looking to fix and cure may prolong our lives, but it does not necessarily enhance the quality of them.” Getting rid of symptoms is something that just gets rid of the tension, the bit that pulls you to know something is not quite right, this is definitely my barometer for the level of care I am offering myself.
I absolutely used to think that when I got sick there was something wrong with me that had to be fixed. And I would often seek something to do that fixing for me, no matter the cost, and not because I truly wanted to heal but because the sickness was a hindrance to the disregarding ways that I chose to live in, basically I did not want to stop and come back to my body and take responsibility for how I was living which was making my body have to be sick in order to come back to some sense of harmony with itself.
Very interesting how an original whole concept can become twisted over time, separated into two where on the one hand we seem to be God like in our ability to control a situation (cure)… but that quickly gets exposed if we do not bring the whole to life (care).
What this blog is presenting is that the way that we live is way off and so as a result we have this cycle of people getting sicker and sicker and those that are there to support us in the conventional sense are also dealing with their own illnesses and diseases and so it’s like the blind leading the blind. There is another way to live that can really and truly get us out of the mess that we are in and it starts with us taking Responsibility for our health and well-being and being open to having a relationship with our bodies, as the mind leading the way has not brought us any true answers.
‘We have come to associate ‘care’ with trying, being careful, being cautious even’ – this is so true, and sometimes when we think we are ‘caring for someone’ we are in fact being with them in a way that doesn’t support them, through walking on egg shells, avoiding conflict, exposure or any issues. Sometimes the best way we can care for someone when they are making irresponsible or disregarding choices is to highlight this and confront them, highlighting that their natural way is totally different to how they’re choosing to be in that moment.
Love the awareness that you bring here Anne to our perspective on illness and what approach we take to it – are we willing to see what may be there in our lives that is possibly contributing to it or do we just want to get rid of it and back to how we are used to living…
Wow, I love the expose of the bastardized version of what it is to care – and how I relate to this. The way I care too much about other’s opinions; the way I do not take good care of myself so overcompensate by being overly careful and hesitant. This invites what’s far from caring into my sphere of life – which would otherwise have been full with love – has included being crashed into through no technical fault of my own.
True care as you outline, Anne, is so much more meaningful than what is generally taken as being caring. Bringing true care into my life, which is an on-going learning process for me, I find so rewarding and has brought about great self-appreciation that I did not previously have.
A fascinating insight to the background of two words so commonly used, and it turns out in a totally different way to what they where originally meant to mean. As scientific medicine progresses, the ability to prolong life increases, with some scientists contemplating the ability to live forever – but like you say, why live to 100 years old if the last 20, 30 or even 50 years of your life are only half lived, not really full and vital. Long life is not a problem, but perhaps instead of striving for more years, we could begin to work on increasing the quality of life lived in those years.
How many of us have got stuck in trying to fix or remove the symptom instead of looking at what truly caused this in the first place, right back to the energetic cause, before the symptom had even manifested? I know I used to think I was treating and healing the underlying cause, but now I ask myself, did I truly look at how I was living and how this was contributing to my illness or disease?
The idea that we can fix ailments, illness and disease immediately disempowers us from our ability to read and heal ourselves, when a doctor greets his patient he treats the end result not the recurring ill patterns that bring us to this place – here lies our power, our responsibility.
Anne this highlights how far we stray from the true meaning of a word. I totally get what you say about care being misused to not hurt people’s feelings – but in doing so we are holding back from them the truth of what is there to be said. What if we set our identity and needs aside for a second and were able to communicate with each other in full – what extraordinary time it would save – and just get to the black and white of it instead of filling our conversations with padding. There is lots here to reflect on.
When a word that originally held the meaning ‘care, concern, responsibility’, particularly in a spiritual sense gets narrowed down to the medical sense alone of remedy, it shows the restriction that we have placed on (and accepted) true healing.
How interesting to explore the meaning of the word care-full – because by taking care in some ways we harden our bodies because that kind of ‘taking care’ means being cautious not to offend, cause a reaction etc. ‘while we are busy in our heads, we are not at ease in our bodies.’ True care is allowing ourselves to be open to feeling and then expressing what we feel. True care is feeling all of humanity and doing what needs to be done.
We as health professionals are often obsessed with curing and to do otherwise is often deemed to be a failure. Often our patients are not given the opportunity to choose what is true for them as the discussions are laced with the expectations or beliefs of the practitioner. It is time that we allow and honour what our patients are feeling in their bodies when making these health choices.
We have come a long way in prolonging life today but most often at the expense of the quality of it. I myself would prefer quality over quantity. True care over ‘cure’ or a fix.
We really do see illness and disease as a nuisance. Many do not want to understand how it came about, least of all heal it. This is something that we have become very good at, just ‘getting over’ something, versus, taking the responsibility to truly cure and care for what is actually going on in the body.
‘Now, we see illness and disease as a nuisance, an inconvenience, to be fixed, gotten rid of, cured, so we can get back to doing what we were doing before. And more and more we have come to place the responsibility for this onto our doctors and healers, and less and less onto ourselves and our way of life.’ I feel to add that we often complain about the service offered but the national health service in the UK and to be honest it is massively under resourced however so much could be done to help ease the pressure on it is if we were all to take responsibility for our own wellbeing as much possible – our complaints are about something of our own creation.
“Could true care be a willingness to feel what is there to be felt, and to honour our feelings, to be aware of what is truly going on within and around us?”. This is such a big contrast to the false care most of us have bought into which often holds back from saying or acting on what is true lest it upsets others or ourself, when we aim for everyone being emotionally comfortable instead of everyone evolving, expanding and deepening the love, awareness and connection in our lives.
“In ancient times, medicine offered true care. We knew that connection with people mattered, that what we ate affected us, and that there was a true and simple way to live. Illness and disease were seen as a reflection of the way we were living, and an opportunity to make true change.” If we knew this back then where did we go wrong? What happened? And can we reconnect with this wisdom that lives within all of us? When we disconnect from ourselves and each other the simple things that we actually already know get lost. The answer, therefore, lies in re-connection.
True care comes with the responsibility of being consciously present with ourselves and looking at the big picture of us and our reflection to the world.
When we seek a cure we are primarily motivated to alleviate and relieve our symptoms, not to consider why the disease and illness manifested in the first place. In comparison, true care lays the foundations for true healing which addresses the whole body and being by actively encouraging an understanding of the root cause of the disharmony, which in turn manifests as the disease or illness.
This seeking of cures can be so disregarding to our bodies. It stops us from looking at our choices and behaviours that have led to the current situation that requires a cure. Caring for our bodies feels like a way to be in-tune with them and be responsive to our needs before they manifest in illness and disease.
“Cure” has long been interchangeable with “lack of symptoms” for me: a state where the physical handicaps have gone away and I can get back to living life exactly as I did before – which I can now see very likely caused the symptoms in the first place! Whilst “care” and “healing” seem to go together with a far broader relationship to health and life: directly connected with deepening my appreciation, connection to and responsibility toward my body, to people and to the life I am living. Interesting that they both shared the same root, but their meaning has been conveniently altered to embrace two quite different ways of approaching life.
“But we have come to associate ‘care’ with trying, being careful, being cautious even. This is not true care. We ‘care’ too much to hurt people’s feelings, to be honest with them, to tell them the truth. And we ‘care’ about ourselves too much to say it as it is, to deal with people’s reactions, to not be liked, to get it ‘wrong’, to say and do what is needed, rather than what people want to hear.” Thank you for the light bulb moment Anne. I can understand how this allows fear to creep in and take over and leads to holding back what’s there to be expressed.
Many people as they age are administered medication that prolongs their life, but not always in a way that allows the quality to remain. There is always a moral question of how much someone should be propped up to live longer if it doesn’t allow for good quality lifestyles. But perhaps of most importance is the care given in all this, if true care is the top priority it is a beautiful thing to behold for those in their later years.
What you share Anne, there is lots to ponder on, as true care is a choice in how we care for ourselves and to have a cure well, is it something to prolong a life for the sake of prolonging it, or is there true healing for true purpose?
And I agree on another point Anne, whilst it is amazing how we have been able to prolong life through modern technology it is shocking to see what that quality of life is like, which makes you really ponder if it is worth it.
I agree Anne, the reason we have a major health crisis today is because we are shirking our responsibility to truly take care of our bodies. Because of the great advances of modern medicine we think we can get away with it, but the current state of illness and disease in our society clearly shows we don’t.
What’s is amazing is that i have found that taking responsibility for the way we live is hugely empowering and as I continue to commit to this, I know that I truly have the ability to read and heal myself on many levels.
“Could true care be developing a relationship with our bodies?” – this question really stood out for me. Cure – kind of has a feeling of it being clinical, nothing too personal; but care brings in and asks for a bit more than that, and that will inevitably involve looking at personal choices – the ones we have made and the ones we will be making. Our body has so much to offer and teach us, and precisely because of that, sometimes it feels like we are deliberately reluctant to give it full attention that would reignite its potential.
It seems we have lost the true meaning of cure to hold our bodies with care and love and replaced it with the focus of getting rid of symptoms. Thank you Anne it feels true to focus on both appreciating and cherishing this body as a the path of true medicine.
What a great sharing on true care and at this moment feels heaven sent to read and appreciate that I know what it feels like to truly care for my body. I always have the choice to re-connect to my body if I find that my thoughts are making me ‘too careful’ to be truthful about what is going on.
When I get an injury or an illness I am very quick to get frustrated and cross and blame my body. This is really crazy as it is reflecting to me all of the choices I have made to get to that point it is not separate in any way, and the quickest way to heal is to get honest and make some other choices.
Understanding how and what is involved in true care is essential for us to come to terms with as a society. At the very least, care of ourselves helps us develop the care we can offer others.
Really glad I read this blog. Now I think about it I have used the word care to be an alleviation to a un easement.
Whereas a component of care is to take consideration of everything that we do to continue to develop a refinement of care for ourselves and others.
True care to me can only come from being responsible to who we truly are, that we are from God and part of a grander whole, that all what we do, be and think has an influence on all of us and the universe in adressing the wider picture. When we live in harmony with who we truly are then we are connected to a way of living that cares for everything we are part of.
A cure takes it right back to the very source of the issue which is always the quality or energy that we allow through our bodies.
Committing to bringing care, presence and quality into every moment so that each thought, word and action is loving and caring for ourselves and for others, takes some dedication to start with, but is so worth it. When we start to live like this, and appreciate the choices we’re making to care for ourselves deeply, it builds a foundation that gets stronger and steadier.
A great expose Anne on how far we have strayed from what true care is… “Could true care be developing a relationship with our bodies?” This is something that for most, would be quite a revelation… we simply don’t think this way, nor do we generally challenge our current notions of what ‘caring’ for another looks like. Thanks, I love the historic references and context you’ve given this… it is fascinating to see how we have allowed the bastardisation of a word to become pervasive in it’s activity. Bringing it back to the truth of the word, exposes instantly the errant activity this is reflecting.
It is a very convenient and arrogant way to view illness as a nuisance, to be treated and then return to the way that we were living. Imagine if we were to live in such a way that offered true medicine and healing for the irresponsibility that we do allow.
Atropine is a poison, and it is the cure if you are exposed to chemical warfare agents, but will kill you if you haven’t been exposed and you receive the injection. In this occasion the cure will kill you if you don’t have the illness… and the illness will kill you if you don’t get the injection. In this case one should take great care in having the cure. Does this make this a catch 22?
Caring in a way that is not true.. Hmm yes that is something that so many including myself have been under the illusion of. That is, caring in such a way that we place far more focus on the doing aspect of “caring” instead of the actual being aspect which comes through the quality we do it in. The quality is actually far more important in many ways than the actual doing as it is the quality that allows the true healing to take place.
Care is what we can offer ourselves to avoid illness and disease and vastly enhance our quality of life. Cure is what we seek when we have become ill and want a way out of the illness – often meaning we may not wish to take responsibility for bringing care into our lives. What a chasm of difference! Thank you Anne for bringing this clearly into perspective in such a thorough and detailed way.
I absolutely love what has been presented here abut ‘curing’ – as in curing meats etc. equating to what we do when we go for a cure for illness and disease. How is it we see a cure to be the pinnacle of medical success when it is more often than not only ‘curing’ the body so it can continue to exist, but not with true health and vitality. Why do we measure life in the number of years we survive instead of recognising that if life is lived (not merely survived) with deep care for oneself, then the vitality this brings is worth far more than a few bonus years of living cured of an illness, but not the dis-ease that is in the body. I sure know which I would rather do – live fewer years with a vitality that knows no bounds. And so this requires taking responsibility. Simple in truth but can be easy to avoid.
It is incredible how we conveniently downgrade the meaning of words so that they convery something very different, when we choose to live with a lack of responsibility. Thank you for an insightful blog.
Anne I would use this line a lot “We ‘care’ too much to hurt people’s feelings” how crazy when I look back, as every time it was not that I actually cared about another, instead it was that I did not want to express the truth as it would expose the comfortable life I was living and the lack of true care in my life.
It is true that we don’t seem to understand that what we do to ourselves we do to all!. Therefore to look after ourselves lovingly means we also look after others too. My choice in this life is to live to the best of my ability a rich loving way this lifetime, rather than for the longest time. Thank you Anne.
I choose deep, ‘richness’ and appreciation, over being kept alive, just to be kept alive “Do we want a life of richness, of quality, irrespective of the length of it, or do we want to prolong life at all costs?” The quality of the life lived is what matters to me, I no longer want to survive but thrive and live my potential.
Almost everyday I encounter someone who thinks that the illness, symptom that is occurring in their body is a ‘nuisance’ as you say. I know I used to relate to my period symptoms in this way, and just wanted it to be over. I felt like that about my stomach also when I ate food that did not support it. Changing the approach from which we observe these symptoms enable us to change our lives, this is what they are there, they are signals, they are a gift to offer us wisdom to make different choices.
Well said Anne – ‘… we have the ability to ‘cure’ all sorts of ills, but with what quality are people living, and what is the level of care with which we are delivering these services? To care or to cure – can we reunite the two and deliver true health care once again?’
Anne we certainly have lost what the word care is truly about – I love what you offer here- that in the past we truly cared when it came to medicine and took responsibility for how we were living and now we simply just expect medicine to make us better. We have a responsibility to really look at how we are with our bodies. This will change the face of healthcare – if we are honest with how we are living and the choices we make in terms of exercise, food, sleep, how much we take on, the role of emotions, reaction ect. There is a different way to live – a way where we do not absorb but rather observe. And that is truly caring for ourselves and ultimately each other.
‘In ancient times, medicine offered true care. We knew that connection with people mattered, that what we ate affected us, and that there was a true and simple way to live. Illness and disease were seen as a reflection of the way we were living, and an opportunity to make true change.’
There was also care in the quality of our choices, knowing that everything had an impact on everything; and never did it not.
A cure without care in the true sense of the word is not medicinal, despite the ‘result’.
It is so interesting when we begin to understand the changes in the meaning of words and their use over time. This can be very revealing of our own influence over them, rather than that which they can offer us.
Recently I went to the dentist and experienced both care and cure. My dentist did 2 fillings for me and then afterwards I lay down in another room and slept while my body deeply rested and healed. It was a beautiful experience.
This is a great exploration of our relationship with the words care and cure. I get a sense of the harmonious, caring and holistic approach to health and unfolding of life embraced by man in earlier times. However more and more it seems we are just interested in fixing the problem without an ounce of responsibility or care applied to the situation if we can get away with it, and the fact that we define ‘cure’ as this to me is less reflective of the actual meaning of the word than the consciousness with which we are approaching our lives and our evolution.
Recently i found myself in a hydrotherapy pool; I was blown away at the amount of people who are struggling with chronic pain. Their lives revolve around the management of and responding to the pain, some have issues from accidents or arthritis, postoperative, wear and tear. Being relatively young it made me question if I was really taking enough care of my body, where will I be in another 40 years?
I really appreciate knowing the history of these terms – it’s incredible how we need to get back to the original meaning, and how supportive the original meaning is too.
These days the desire to live longer — whatever, seems to prevail, and the expectancy both that we will, also that we have a right to be cured. Everything is about rights with no thought about our choices in life and their consequences. If it could be understood that having not cared for ourselves in a loving way leads to what we are trying to avoid, then curing would no longer be an illusionary expectation, and true caring with a richer quality of life would be restored.
The body delights in the quality we offer it in self care, in return we have vitality, joy, harmony, love all in abundance if we choose and that can be a cure for a lot of symptoms.🤗
Focusing on the quality in our movement would return us to the connection to our body, beginning self care which is to cure.
” That is the dilemma we are faced with in modern medicine today – we have the ability to ‘cure’ all sorts of ills, but with what quality are people living, and what is the level of care with which we are delivering these services? ” This is also a conversation most are not willing to have, but one only need visit an aged care facility and speak to the residents to understand they do not want to be here any longer, existing only because in some cases of medical intervention. Then when you look at what industries have an interest in keeping these people alive, you get the real facts. A lot is now money focused, as the pharmaceutical and age care companies are highly profitable sectors.
It’s no longer about the person, but the person as a commodity.
This conversation of responsibility is something a lot of Doctors have avoided in the past, possibly because we have given our power away to them and treat them as Gods, but I feel that’s starting to change with more awareness around the consequences of the way we choose to live and Dr’s struggling to fix the myriad of multiple diseases we are now presenting with. I have noticed the consequences of living in disregard are now being talked about with studies on alcohol, sugar, obesity all pointing to our irresponsibility resulting to an increase in relatable diseases. May be the pendulum of responsibility is beginning to swing the other way, supporting Dr’s in their work and us taking responsibility for the illness we present with.
One of the notion’s of medical care is to ‘get better’. But are we questioning what getting better means and whether this leads to any true and lasting change?
There feel to be several blogs, or moreso a book, to be written from the foundations you’ve shared here Anne. This is a question worthy of deep consideration, as to what living, healing and quality of life truly mean to us: “Do we want a life of richness, of quality, irrespective of the length of it, or do we want to prolong life at all costs?”
We seem obsessed with prolonging life, as if prolonging life means ‘success’ in healing – but is it so, when we consider the true nature of healing and how it is about the whole of who we are and not only the bandaiding of the physical body?
When you write of a simpler relationship with our own healing Anne – one that has been held in humanity’s history – it all makes sense. We have become so taken with the great gifts of modern medicine, that we have lost the true meaning of healing along the way… a meaning which rests in addressing the root cause of any apparent condition manifest in the body (or one’s psyche). How wilfully we hand over responsibility for addressing any ailment to a physician, surgeon, a pill or ‘fix’, without encompassing the whole of what healing is truly about… It’s an abuse, really, of what is on offer to us today through medicine (which is astounding) – when we don’t take responsibility for the part we ourselves have played in contributing to the root cause of whatever may be going on for us, and it becomes only about the ‘fix’, without addressing the way we have been living.
“Could true care be a commitment to making our every move – our every thought, word and action – loving and caring, for ourselves and for others?”- such a great point you make. In order to provide care for another, especially as a health practitioner, it is important to take responsibity for our own healthcare first before dealing with another.
We are then a reflection for true health.
Life is very extreme at the moment. When I see or hear the news I am astounded by the conditions that many many people all over the world are living in. And I mean basic conditions such as abuse and violence right up to the absolute illusion of hyper fitness and wealth. So when we talk about illness and disease being a reflection of the way we live, at the moment, much of human life seems to be the illness itself. I mean truly, the facts of the human atrocities that are happening at the moment are so extreme in their violence. Surely then the question is, is it not the thought processes that cause these behaviours which are the actual diseases on our planet?
This is a very important question we must ask our self, what quality of life will we have if we decide to have an operation or procedure to keep us alive? I was talking to a doctor the other day and an elderly patient of his asked him,’ if I was to have the procedure would I be able to walk my dog and go fishing?’. The doctor said no he would be bed ridden, he chose not to have the procedure and continued to walk his dog until he died not that soon after. His quality of life and what mattered to him was more important then living longer.
This is so true Anne, so many of us have just wanted to fix and get rid of our ailments without looking at the true cause, the energetic reason behind it all, ‘we became taken with the idea that we could fix ailments, cut lumps out, have power over life and death, and generally play God. With this seems to have come the notion that we could fix illness and disease, and then go back to the same way of living that made us ill in the first place.’
Yes our predilection for curing stops us from seeing that the answer to our health lives in us truly caring. In feeling how much you love people, there is a completeness that needs no band aid, surgery or instrument to fix. This way of being is much greater medicine than we may think. Thank you Anne, for caring to revisit the meanings of these words.
I feel we need to go back (or forward as there is no back! or is there?) to what cure truly meant, in that the way we live, if lived lovingly can be preventative … ‘In ancient times, medicine offered true care. We knew that connection with people mattered, that what we ate affected us, and that there was a true and simple way to live. Illness and disease were seen as a reflection of the way we were living, and an opportunity to make true change.’
Thank you Anne, this is a great blog exposing the way that we as a society have fallen for the concept of getting better or getting fixed without any true connection or awareness of our bodies. Connecting to the quality of our essence and learning to move with it and honouring it is the only way we will stop abusing our bodies and giving our power away to others to care for and cure us.
‘ Could true care be as simple as feeling yourself in your body – from the top of your head to the tips of your fingers and the ends of your toes, and being aware of your whole body as you move, in everything that you do?’ Love this Anne,we can never be reminded enough!
‘Looking to fix and cure may prolong our lives, but it does not necessarily enhance the quality of them.’ I see this in the society I am living in where people are living longer but the quality of their lives are actually very poor. Most of the elderly people I know suffer from depression because they feel isolated and are often living on their own, and they suffer from multiple ailments, illness and disease. It is rare to meet someone who are in their late eighties living with joy, vitality and great health. I have met a few of these amazing people at Universal Medicine, the way they live inspires us to care and take responsibility for our health and choices.
We are all looking for the cure to our ailments, and care is ultimately the best form of medicine… it’s always available to us, we are fully empowered in being able to administer it, and if we listen to our bodies we are 100% the expert on what is needed!
Viewing illness as a message that disease is a way to learn to return to ease, true health that is, in the body, is a great way to live, because we are listening to the messages our bodies give us. This gives the body an opportunity to heal. It appears that only when we are ill, do we seem to notice how important our true health and vitality is in life. There is a great message to take more responsibility to stay well in the first place.
Quality of life is the key, and if we make it about quality and our relationship with our body then we have:
‘To care or to cure – can we reunite the two and deliver true health care once again?’
Yes we can, yes I can, but I need to start with self responsibility.
This is brilliant – ‘too careful’, I could related to everything you said Anne about being to careful and perceiving this as care, and whilst we are actually being ‘careful’ we are creating ‘dis – ease’ in our bodies.
‘Could it be said that true ‘care’ is the ‘cure’? That is how they actually have the same origins?
This is very reflective of where we are today:
‘Now, we see illness and disease as a nuisance, an inconvenience, to be fixed, gotten rid of, cured, so we can get back to doing what we were doing before. And more and more we have come to place the responsibility for this onto our doctors and healers, and less and less onto ourselves and our way of life.’ This perception will only continue to exacerbate our current conditions of illness and disease that already is sky-high. Simply if we don’t start to make the connection that the way we live, our lifestyle, including psychological and emotional wellbeing can cause imbalances in our bodies that eventually we can get sick.
‘Could true care be as simple as feeling yourself in your body – from the top of your head to the tips of your fingers and the ends of your toes, and being aware of your whole body as you move, in everything that you do?’ – what a great question and going by the 100 of years before now seeking to care for themselves is exactly what they did, having a sense of there whole body and the quality in the way they moved. To have moments of awareness is a stepping stone, then to be aware and conscious of the quality we are choosing is the next level of living that is true medication for our bodies.
To care or to cure when you read this blog it is a no brainier that it is the quality of life full of richness as opposed to an existence in making do with how good it can get with the support of medicine. I have been building my life after being inspired by Serge Benhayon and the practical teaching that he shares and this vitality and joy that I am choosing is the best I have felt in my life and my health has been a reflection of this.
If our medical practitioners are living the same irresponsibility as their clients than how can they reflect or even suggest a change in lifestyle to their clients? A true healer in my opinion is someone who walks the talk and lives and breathes everything they advise to their clients.
Could true care be the ultimate cure? If we are talking about our deepest ill which is separation from our soul and from God?
And we wonder why illness and disease is increasing, ‘With this seems to have come the notion that we could fix illness and disease, and then go back to the same way of living that made us ill in the first place.’
I love this blog Anne, especially the part explaining that in ancient times it was known that the way we lived was the cause of our ills. We have misused medicine by looking for the cure while continuing the unhealthy lifestyle.
This attitude is unhealthy, dishonest, and is clearly not working. If we could return our attitude to the responsible and holistic ancient wisdom and combine it with modern medical practice all those people who are managing symptoms have an opportunity for a complete cure. Could it be that this is the only way?
‘ While we are busy in our heads we are not at ease in our bodies ‘ I didn’t used to be aware of this but now I can really feel the impact of running thoughts through my head, or going up into my head, has on my body and health. Bringing that quality of care to myself my health problems have resolved, it is so powerful.
….’we became taken with the idea that we could fix ailments, cut lumps out, have power over life and death, and generally play God. With this seems to have come the notion that we could fix illness and disease, and then go back to the same way of living that made us ill in the first place.’ – This is such a key when it come to healing in truth, we have a reasonability in our healing path to look deeply into the emotional cause of sickness in disease which then presents physically in the body. Removing the physical ill without arresting the emotional ill is just a temporary bandage.
Great to go into the detail of these words and surprising through sharing this, how it become clearer and clearer. This reflected that indeed the care is in the detail and often when a cure is sought this is neglected for the quick fix outcome. Yet in the detail as the meaning and application becomes clearer, the truth of how to live in harmony within our bodies can be felt and understood.
Same,Same but ooohhh so very different. Learning to appreciate life and health from an energetic point of view, opened my eyes to a world of care that was miles away from any cold tablet or cough mixture. Not that these are inherently bad, as they can be used caringly, but the energetic responsibility needs to be matched with any regular treatment.
I recall when I was young I would rush to my mum whenever there were any issues. I knew I would receive total care, and if a cure to something was required the greatest attention and dedication would be put into bringing it about. I did not consider care and cure were separate. My appreciating of what I used to consider as ‘cure’ has expanded to what I now call ‘healing’. Healing is not limited to ridding my body of a symptom, but involves a far more profound resolving of the issue that brought about the symptom in the first place. And my understanding of care has expanded so that it includes the support for healing and in many occasions I can see that getting sick has been part of the overwhelming care with which my Soul, God and the Universe hold me in – that sickness itself is part of deepening my awareness, resolving deep seated issues and healing. We may have become very efficient and advanced on ‘curing’ and dealing with symptoms, but without the care which is actually the over encompassing ingredient, we will remain very short of true healing.
A cure without care is almost a case of tricking the body into fixing things despite itself.
Anne in two sentences you sum up so much “In ancient times, medicine offered true care. We knew that connection with people mattered, that what we ate affected us, and that there was a true and simple way to live.” My question is therefore why today do we avoid simplicity, as in doing so there is no doubt we eat the wrong foods, spend more time in meetings that go no where and walk in the tension of life. If we’ve always known the answers, then surely the only way forward is to return to what we know and feel inside is true?
I like this exploration in what true care is, how it can be as simple as being aware of your body as it moves. This feels not only very nurturing and supportive, but also simple and accessible to actually do.
I love your blog Anne. Especially where you write about being “too careful” and what this means for the body. My partner recently said to me, “don’t be too careful”, I now have a very clear and much deeper understanding from the way you have expressed how being careful brings a tension to the body.
Through self-care, we have a way forward for much of the illness and disease currently on the planet.
We fall for the illusion that it’s all about completing tasks. Completed – box ticked. What we refuse to feel in any given object or accomplished task is the quality in which the task has been done. In this quality lies true success.
It would indeed be an interesting thing – to observe what would happen if we were to take away all the drugs and surgery in the world for one month and see how we fared. There is a propensity to seek the quick fix and band-aid solution so that we can continue our destructive behaviours recklessly ignoring the clear warning signals that our bodies are giving us – yet if we were to remove the safety net, we might get a more honest picture of where we are at. But instead of waiting for the wakeup call, we can start making different choices now.
It is like we are no longer even looking to cure issues but more manage them. Our state of health is so out of control that many just accept ill health as a part of life and we then just look for anything that will relieve the symptoms but not change the conditions that led to the ill health.
Something as simple as teaching the true meaning of these two words, care and cure, with the understanding and lived experience of them as expressed above would make so much difference to the wellbeing of our societies and humanity.
The beauty felt when we truly care for ourselves and hence for others is simply amazing to feel and live. It brings about so much awareness for our bodies and the connection inside us our knowing and the support from this in our lives in every moment. A great blog offering the difference and reinterpretations that have happened and the truth presented .
“Interestingly, curare is also a type of poison, as are many medical treatments, when not used according to directions (and sometimes even when they are!).” Love your going back to the root definition of words Anne. We so often bastardise meanings – to suit our current ways of living.
Absolutely fascinating how the unintended consequences of providing such an effective set of cures has divorced us from taking care of ourselves. Preventative medicine makes so much more sense, and this is exactly what true care of the body is.
I think we’re all pretty confused as a humanity and we try our best without realising that there is another way – we just need to stop trying to make things better. Sometimes it feels as if the system is one big unstoppable thing we all have to abide by, but that is what the system wants us to think. So the answer I think is to be open and honest about what is not working and voicing it out, without necessarily having to get to an answer. Just voicing it out is a great start to get to the truer answer.
Thank you, Anne, for these important questions for us to consider with regards to what supports us to be well. It would seem that we have lost awareness and connection to the beingness of the person as a way to assess what is needed, and have resorted to pharmacology and results driven techniques that treat the outer most symptoms but do not get to the underlying truth.
What came up with me is to investigate the difference in how I care for my car and how I care for my body. In a way you can say that should be the same, as I can feel that my car is in a way a representation of my body and I feel it is important to keep it in a good condition and to do regular maintenance according to the prescribed intervals. But to me taking care for my body is much more that that. The caring feels to be on a much deeper level, to also care for my energetic wellbeing. As my body does not have a prescribed maintenance interval I can refer to, I need a solid connection and relationship in which it tels me how to live my life to sustain a body that can teach me the lessons I have to learn in life, in whatever health condition that may be.
All too often people don’t care for themselves but have the expectation that when they get sick the medical profession with will offer a medicine that will cure their ailment so they can continue living their care-less life style.
This is fantastic to read again and what comes to me is the responsibility that I am prepared to live in – in every moment. Now that is one that I keep dancing around and will go there in some areas but not in all so really the Care that needs to be taken is that I am living this Quality all of the time and that this is the responsibility; when connected to feels Absolutely incredible. So to resist such a beautiful way of being seems utterly ridiculous but when I am asked to step up I shy away and hide. In doing this I lose, humanity loses and the world becomes a dark and heavy place to be in. To Care for the Universe is to Care for myself, so I say game on – really it is a no brainer.
Reading about how care has been mis-interpreted and then about true care I can feel the difference in my body; the intention alone has a physiological effect on us.
I have always felt that prevention is preferable to a cure and true self care has to be the best preventative. Taking responsibility for our health by eating and drinking what nourishes and nurtures our bodies, taking regular exercise without pushing ourselves and bringing a quality of true love to our bodies. If we we carry on down the so called normal route of wine and fast food, sugary snacks or drinks, and rushing around we don’t give our bodies a chance.
The quality of my life a few years ago was not great, exhaustion, low levels of vitality, not particularly joyful “….we have the ability to ‘cure’ all sorts of ills, but with what quality are people living…” I lived sluggish and gave myself ‘rewards’, getting little highs from weekend wine, fried food and the occasional cigarette. I have altered how I live through self-care and it has completely changed my quality of life, I feel great so much of the time, healthy, vital, confident, enthusiastic, joyful and very connected with my body. These are qualities that I had not even considered I could have, but they are building and I feel amazing. Care is so much more productive than cure, foundation of health, vitality and connection or living dull and heavy and fixing things when an emergency crops up. I know what I prefer.
The is so true, this is a general attitude we can find “Now, we see illness and disease as a nuisance, an inconvenience…” Being annoyed and feeling ‘victim’ to it rather than asking the question ‘where is my responsibility in this?’. Many diseases in the world are directly linked with lifestyle choices. There is so much to be considered personally, concerning why a person becomes ill. And it starts by reflecting on the choices we have made in life before the diagnosis. Self-care reclaims our authority and responsibility concerning our own bodies health, rather than waiting and relying on the conventional medicine to ‘fix it’ when things go ‘wrong’.
I agree with you Anne, that physicians too for the most part have lost sight of the fundamental living principle of true self-care – and that with power of modern drugs and surgery, people are really mis-using this life-line to further push the boundaries of recklessness and self-abuse. Everyone is responsible for their own health and well-being, but we also can accept the responsibility for what we reflect to others that may inspire them to truly care for themselves, or continue upon their own self-destructive path.
‘Could true care be a commitment to making our every move – our every thought, word and action – loving and caring, for ourselves and for others?’
This is a totally different aspect of how I was used to the word care. Care was for me especially caring for others and caring that everything is in place so that they are supported. In truth how you offer it, true care means in the first place to take care of my movements in order that I am able to truly take care for others. This changes the scene completely.
How the health of humanity and the world would change if we all realised that illness and disease are the body’s way of saying “hey something is wrong here so please stop and listen”. Instead the majority of us simply look at what is wrong with them as an inconvenience that gets in the way of their lives, want a quick fix and then to get back to how they were living before they got sick. I love that the body is always talking to us; we just need to be taught to listen and that we are responsible for the care of this very precious vessel, from a very early age.
Coming back to this again. Last time I was pondering Care = Cure. Now I’m thinking about Cure = Care. I was fascinated to hear a cancer specialist talk about how it was an established fact that recovering cancer patients had what they called “a three month window” after receiving the all clear in which to change their habits. If the patient was able to implement changes in that time (whilst the awareness of the illness and cure was still in the forefront of their thoughts) then those changes would often ‘stick’ (and the benefits would be felt). But most of the time, after three months, most patients had resorted back to their old ways – the very same ways that possibly caused them to get the cancer in the first place. And thus we have the Cure which can either inspire Care – the fright of cancer being enough to wake people up to start taking better care of themselves – or not, and the patient returns to their old ways. Without Care, the Cure doesn’t last and the cancer may easily return. What the specialist was finding was that for most people Cure does not equal Care. Perhaps if it did, then the one illness would be enough to change our ways?
I find it interesting that curare or too much of a dose of a cure can be a poison to someone when the correct care and cure can assist a healing in another. It shows to me how things can be mis-interpreted over generations as words and meanings can change and morph into complete opposites. The quality and depth of care is as equal and important as the developing the cure, they are still inexorably interlinked.
For me, the difference between care and cure is the element in the therapeutic relationship that changes how we respond to the doctor. In fact it is not restricted to the medical profession as when teachers care it has the same effect, there is a connection in caring that does not say, how can we fix this and move on.
“To care or to cure?”-–That is the question – and you have answered it beautifully in your blog, Anne. Yes we can reunite the two by each of us living with a quality that is brought by being with our bodies in whatever we do.
Anne, I love the way you examine the meaning of words and presenting it so simply with examples. By doing this it helps to reinstate their true power
“…we see illness and disease as a nuisance, an inconvenience, to be fixed, gotten rid of, cured, so we can get back to doing what we were doing before.” So true Anne, yet what we were doing is what got us to the point of illness in the first place. Illness is a stop and offers us the chance to take responsibility for our choices and correct them to live a life that is more supportive and more loving.
We seem to have a relationship with time that does not support our quality. We want things done in super fast time and we want longevity of life with quality coming as a poor second. Caring and curing from a quality first approach would go a long way to supporting true health care.
This is so brilliant. Just that one fact. That care and cure come from the same word source. I love that. Care = cure. So totally different to how most of us live, which is; non-care, non-care, non-care…until…smash…then seek cure…get cured (hopefully)…then (inevitably) revert back to non-care, non-care….This was me. 100%. Until I met Serge Benhayon and begun to understand the absolute importance of self-care. He has totally changed my relationship with my self and my self care. Previously a visit to the doctor was an absolute last resort. Nowadays I have frequent check-ups and am so much more aware of the effects that the way I look after myself have on my body. It’s been miraculous and so supportive. Because it’s not just about me looking after my body but also listening to what my body is telling me. Whilst I am deeply appreciative of my doctors and the amazing National Health system in the UK, our greatest doctors are our bodies. There is nothing about medical science that they don’t know and nothing that slips through their net. Listen to your body and you will be given a pinpoint-accurate diagnosis.
When I hear the word cure, I get suspicious, in this day and age cure to me sounds like a bandaid solution that can be dangerous. Someone at work said to me the other day that they bet the government has the cure to cancer but won’t release it because the pharmaceutical company make too much money. I explained that even if there was a cure, it would not address the issue of why we are getting cancer and the responsibility to change the way we are living. I love the concept of approaching the word cure from a point of care and not solution.
It seems to me in our modern times many cures can be delivered without care, and with that the experience can be traumatic and or limiting. What is truly healing is to be met and nurtured and truly cared for at a time in our lives when we are most vulnerable. Then the healing can be life long and profound.
To care or to cure – can we reunite the two and deliver true health care once again?
Great question Anne and I would have to say no we can’t unless we start taking responsibility for ourselves and the care we take in everyday life and stop thinking we can live how we like and that doctors and drug companies will fix us when illness and disease do arise.
So often we want a cure and not the responsibility of self-care which requires deeply considering our lifestyle, and or the deep seated emotional turmoil at the root of many of our ills and diseases. The quality in which we care for ourselves and take responsibility for our wellbeing then becomes part of the cure.
“With this seems to have come the notion that we could fix illness and disease, and then go back to the same way of living that made us ill in the first place.” In learning how to develop our skills so that we have pills, potions and operations for just about everything we suffer the most arrogant thing we do is to not address the real root causes of our diseases, which arise from the way we live. We have so much power over our health and well being, learning to live in harmony with our bodies and deeply respect the messages they send us brings the most amazing resolutions to very common illnesses. There is so much we can do by addressing the way we live, we can actually save ourselves a great deal of suffering if we pay attention to how we treat our bodies each and every day of our lives.
True healing comes from the individual taking responsibility for the way they eat, sleep, breath and live, much is to be said for the support medicine offers but becoming reliant on it without any input has rendered us irresponsible in our own wellbeing. We care but we are not bringing any responsibility to healing but settling for a cure via pharmaceuticals, surrendering instead their quality of life for longevity.
” But ‘cure’ can also apply to meat and skins, whereby we render them ‘fixed’ in such a way that we preserve them, so they do not rot, and can be used for longer. They may last longer, but this process takes the life out of them.” If we chose vitality over existing we would not have nursing homes full of preserved people.
This is such a rich analysis of the state of our health ‘care’, I agree we have forgotten what it means to truly care both for ourselves and for others, and of course this is reflected in our healthcare system. When you really look at it, it’s impossible to separate our care and our responsibility in life, part of being responsible is living with care and ensuring that our every word, thought and action has a true care and love to it.
Anne this is a great call and offers a true refection on our health and the care we take with ourselves and our bodies and the importance of this . Wanting a cure and a betterment of ourselves so often has become at the expense of truly looking at what is going on how we are living and the responsibility we have with our own heath and well being and the root cause of our illness and disease.
What it feels like we have given the power away to others to help us fix or heal our lives…rather than use and claim the power within us to heal our own lives and live healthier.
This is a great blog bringing awareness to how are we all truly living, are we caught up in the illusion of caring and curing, or are we living an irresponsible life and then wanting medicine to help us or are we taking true responsibility for our health and connecting to the true meaning of care and cure. Connecting to our whole body in our every movement and making loving choices to help with our health.
Curing is indeed a somewhat strange word, implying a status quo that is not as bad as the original ill condition but also not on par with vibrant health. Is it possible that we have lowered the bar so much that we don’t actually care anymore and call this intermediate state ‘normal’? And what happens first – tinkering with the words and changing their meaning to fit around our irresponsibility or living in a way that is not true and not loving?
Anne this has left no room for interpretations you have so clearly shared the two different avenues, exposed what is not true and that comes completely down to each and every single one of us and the responsibility that we are prepared to live. The quality in how we live and the way we are being with ourselves.
“When we are busy in our heads we are not at ease in our bodies”. How true this is.
I noticed that the word ‘curious’ also has its origins in ‘cura’.
Having been pretty fixated with ‘cure’ as a modus operandi – as in keeping things looking OK on the surface – I have come to understand and be inspired by what happens when we truly care. We go beyond ‘cure’ to healing and it may not always look like we expect it to look on the surface but it brings about changes in the way we live and view life that are transformative. I stopped smoking over 20 years ago which I saw as a cure of my addiction to cigarettes. I was not free of the anxiety, that smoking was just a symptom of, until more recently coming to a healing of a pattern of behaviour that manifested in all sorts of symptoms, smoking being just one. This turn around has been built on a developing, caring relationship I have with myself and life.
It’s very interesting what you write Anne, about how we think we have become more clever with scientific development, pills and potions, knowledge and surgery, thinking we can play God. We have changed the meaning of care and cure and need to put some love back into the system to support people and deliver the true health care we all deserve. It’s for us all to feel the journey we are on with our own health, instead of trying to fix illness and live in the same ways that caused the ill. This way we can listen to our bodies much more lovingly.
One thing that I see a lot is that people think they are caring for themselves, but in truth they are miles away from it because we are sold the remedies by businesses and medicine when these themselves are actually harmful to the body.
There is no doubt that the future of health-care is to actually care for your health.
Simple and responsible. Yes, Matthew, I look forward to this.
Bring back the ancient times where connection and personal responsibility really mattered;
“In ancient times, medicine offered true care. We knew that connection with people mattered, that what we ate affected us, and that there was a true and simple way to live. Illness and disease were seen as a reflection of the way we were living, and an opportunity to make true change”.
Thank you Anne for an informative and powerful blog.
It is as if physicians leapfrog over the most important part, that being our lifestyle, and jump head first into the pill or cream that fixes. This is however what the public wants, and is not the fault of these incredible doctors that have chosen a path of helping others and witnessing first hand when the body starts to fail. The lifestyle factor is all but squeezed aside, but it is making a comeback, slowly but surely.
The expose of how words like “careful” are used in everyday language is masterful. The word careful implies taking care to not hurt yourself, instead of the supportive care-full showing we can be full of care for ourselves, our environment and those we meet. A whole different way of looking at it.
I totally agree Anne that when we simply look for a pill or medicine to relieve or treat symptoms we can fail to understand or take full responsibility for caring and treating the whole underlying cause. It is the quality with which we take medicine and engage with treatment which can allow the medicine to offer true healing.
Truly caring with our own bodies is such a great foundation for bringing a consistent way of caring for all.
‘Now, we see illness and disease as a nuisance, an inconvenience, to be fixed, gotten rid of, cured, so we can get back to doing what we were doing before.’ When we treat illness and disease in this way we miss the beautiful stop moment that is offered us where our body is discarding what does not belong and is asking us to consider there is another more harmonious way of being with ourselves.
Yes, turning our back on a great invitation – this feels really irresponsible. What I love about my body is that it never holds these dismissals against me, it just offers up another invitation!
This is very revealing, the metamorphosis of the words care and cure from their original definition, moved away from ‘care, concern, responsibility’ particularly in a spiritual sense and has therefore lost the overall holistic sense – or responsibility for a person’s all-round wellbeing. The fact these words are now instead associated with the solution to illness, shows how this area of wellbeing has been reduced to that very narrow band of meaning. We have lost the depth and breadth of the words care and cure.
‘Looking to fix and cure may prolong our lives, but it does not necessarily enhance the quality of them. But bringing that quality brings a depth and richness to life, no matter how long and short it is, and even if we are confronted with illness and disease.’ A beautiful paragraph Anne and one that is so true. Our relationship with time means that we count true well being in years and not in quality.
When we write, we can speak with enormous power, a power that hugely affects those who read it, especially if we have done so before.
I feel that true care must be inclusive of everyone and in consideration to life as a whole as opposed to just one person.
Caring and deeply honouring self is a foundation I am developing and holding for it is the relationship I have with myself that determines the level of care for another.
‘Could true care be as simple as feeling yourself in your body – from the top of your head to the tips of your fingers and the ends of your toes, and being aware of your whole body as you move, in everything that you do?’ This is something that could be taught by all parents and teachers – firstly to care for their own bodies and then to encourage this kind of awareness in the children they look after. In this way we can pay attention to the smallest symptoms and make changes before they become an illness.
We have lost the true meaning of the word ‘care’. I used to think that caring for another was worrying about them and making sure they were ok but I have come to realise that this is not true care. Caring for another to me is expression and then letting it go; there is no attachment.
We do seem to have lost touch with the simplicity of life and our own health care. Our indulgences today have taken us a long way away from what our bodies naturally need and how easy it is to stay well. There is a way to resume this simplicity, through really tuning into and responding to how our bodies feel. It can take time, but becoming aware of the effects of the foods we eat, the things we drink and the quality of our activities in the day is our greatest medicine. When we take care of this fundamental level of self care, our bodies become much more resilient to illness and on the occasions when we are in need of a cure, can respond to medical intervention so much more positively.
How do we treat our own bodies and how honest are we about how much we override what they ask us for on a daily basis?
Establishing a relationship with our bodies to a point where we can’t but put them first is an important step for all of mankind. We have spent many eons on looking for answers for illness and disease and yet we have the answers all within our own bodies.
It is a significant point that the concept of ‘responsibility’ was originally connected to these words and we have dropped it completely. There seems to be a prevalence of leaving out responsibility in every facet of life and our health as well as society is suffering as a result.
So important to note that our accepted healthcare treatments are harmful if not used correctly so we must be responsible for how we use them. If we were to take this attitude to life before this we may not need the intervention from healthcare services afterall.
Seeing illness as a sign from our bodies to deeply support ourselves and become more sensitive to them has allowed me to make adjustments in large and small ways in my day to day rhythm that has continued on after the illness has passed. Being more sensitive to foods and to when my body is tired are two examples. Therefore embracing illness has been life changing for me.
Its very interesting to just read these two words side by side, ‘care’ and ‘cure’ and to really see how they represent totally different ends of the spectrum. Care is about taking responsibility for someone or something, cherishing, nurturing, repairing and replenishing either one’s self, another person or even an object. Cure is something one has to undertake because something has gone wrong, become ill or worn out. It feels to me like it arises from a state of neglect or disregard. This is an important distinction between these two deeds and when we truly understand this, it empowers us to consciously choose where we want to put our energy, into caring for ourselves and our health so that we prevent the need for us to cure our ills, because they are not given the opportunity to arise in the first place.
Care is so much deeper than seeking a cure. Cure now means a quick fix so we can get back to living our ill ways that got us into a mess, whereas care means changing our ways and taking care for ourselves and others, it is caring for the love that we all naturally are and not ignoring this fact.
I think it’s important to really question the quality of life that we live and chase even and to consider what illness and disease is coming up to show us, not just fight it and focus on survival only. Thank you Anne, great stuff to ponder on here.
To care and be responsible for the way we treat our bodies is the first step to bringing awareness and starting to feel the irresponsibility that we have been living in. What a joy it is to start to truly care and nurture our bodies. It feels so natural and simple to self-care and self-nurture ourselves and then the body can self-start it’s own curing mechanism!
What you share on the level of quality we choose for our lives directly corresponds to level of responsibility we are willing to accept. Being around aged care there are many people actually trapped in the cycles you describe some still aware, others not that they are now in a long drawn out very flat life cycle. Just visiting these facilities should be enough for people to consider asking “do the choices I make now and the responsibility I’m willing to live my life in affect where and how I end up? This to me is true care.
What a great question to ponder on – “To care or to cure – can we reunite the two and deliver true health care once again?”. There is so much that is fantastic about modern medicine but if we continue to abuse it in order to maintain a lifestyle of irresponsibility then it is actually working against us rather than for us. We need to care for ourselves first and then when we need the extra support of a cure it is there for us.
True care is developing a relationship with our body… what a wonderful statement that contains within it the potential for redefining how we look after ourselves and each other, and even how our health systems operate.
This is such an important message Anne. What is the true level of ‘care’ that we take in our lives, towards ourselves, everything that we do and others? If we were to take away the ability to band-aid our health with ‘cures’ would we be happy for the world to see how we care for our bodies – how we hold them in every moment? How we go to sleep at night? How and what we eat?… These are very interesting things to consider, especially for a society that has such ‘advanced cures’.
Anne you are spot on when it comes to the desire to ‘fix’ our ailments these days, and in answer to our ‘fixation’ on this, we have an entire medical system geared towards this alone. We no longer have a focus on the deeper understandings of what healing involves, the personal responsibility required and the restoration of an inner harmony that has ben disturbed. A return to the roots of healing and the incorporation of this with the vast knowledge acquired by medicine over the decades is necessary. Enter Universal Medicine!
Yes, and we are moving even from the fixing of individuals but towards just focusing on interventions (treatments) where our entire attention is towards the change of a whole group of people.
Yes Christoph, in many instances we are straying further and further from what it really means to heal and at some point this has to be addressed also.
There is a lot of luxury in health care with many actions being taken, like introducing more and more bureaucracy and rules, that do not support healing and eventually the weight of these actions will be noticed because the money to support them will run out.
Great blog Anne! To care or cure? Doctors nowadays are so heavily booked with patients, as illness and disease has increased dramatically, and people are less willing to take responsibility for the way they are living their lives. Everyone wants a quick fix, to then go back living how they were living, preferring disregard, comfort over true care. What you have proposed is so simple yet powerful- developing a relationship with the body e.g. feeling yourself in your body
– a willingness to feel what is there to be felt, and to honour our feelings, to be aware of what is truly going on within and around us
-a commitment to making our every move – our every thought, word and action – loving and caring, for ourselves and for others.
This is the truth that no one wants to hear that we lived more simply and in tune with our lives when we were in ancient of times and in recent history more so than we do today in our modern world. Hence all the tension and disease as a result of this stress of not living connected to ourselves and our love.
What a fantastic blog Anne, I always enjoy reading your writings as they are straight forward and full of sense and a call to deepen our understanding of what we have taken for granted and are wilfully choosing to play ignorant too.
People want to get their life fixed more then ever before. The willingness to take care for our life is little or zero. How much have we given up on ourselves?
When we discovered we could overrule our body’s messages we created an arrogance in which we champion the fact that we seemingly have power over the physical and responsibility can be avoided. But in sacrificing the true care we have sacrificed true wellbeing and health. Irresponsibility will always come back to us in one way or another.
We have a lot of power over our body. What we have less or no power over are the consequences of the exercise of our power.
I agree Christoph once we have made a choice we cannot change the outcome and we will have to undergo the consequences of that choice.
Being in my body brings a stillness and a knowing of who I am, bringing a flow and ease into all I do….the moment I go into my mind that is lost and I am left feeling unsettled while trying to figure out how or what to do next in a space where there is no flow, just a feeling of resistance.
Sounds like this understanding needs to be the first thing we learn at medical school, or rather even at primary school, as this understanding is something we can all benefit greatly from.
Anne I enjoyed reading about what care is and its true meaning. I don’t remember as a child being encouraged or shown that self care was an accepted way of living…..in fact the opposite, I was taught that I had to take care of others first before taking care of myself. This is when we learn to neglect ourselves and stop listening to our body and from there ill health becomes an accepted part of getting older. What if self care was taught in our schools; could it be possible that we would then see a decline in ill health in our elderly population.
“In ancient times, medicine offered true care. We knew that connection with people mattered, that what we ate affected us, and that there was a true and simple way to live. Illness and disease were seen as a reflection of the way we were living, and an opportunity to make true change.” It seems that we have long forgotten this way of living in favour of improving function over ‘wellness’. Anne, your blog is a beautiful pointer that we can rethink our ways and ways of being that are keeping us stuck.
It always astounds me how much care and attention people give to material possessions, homes, cars, technology, yet ignore and neglect themselves. Self-forgetfulness is a modern disease and claims millions of lives each year,
When we understand and open ourselves up to hearing what our bodies are communicating to us – how we see things and the choices we make take on a whole new sphere, one of responsibility.
We even call it our health CARE system. We don’t call it our health CURE system so where has the care gone? Yes it is still there at a grass roots level, based on the committed and dedicated health care staff who I know do care for humanity and want to support people, but the system as a whole does not support this and if anything is set up to discourage and degrade any true care for people.
I have the deepest respect for our health professionals who do an amazing job at keeping us all going, but we can’t ignore the already high rates of burnout and exhaustion in these professions and we have to consider that this surely affects the quality of the care that can really be delivered by them.
It is interesting to think that today in medicine a ‘cure’ can be given without any ‘care’ if we consider the way pharmaceuticals are used and mis-used today as things that will take away the unwanted symptoms. But where is the healing in this? How can there be if there is no discussion about why the symptoms were there in the first place and an inspiration of how to take care of oneself more?
‘In ancient times, medicine offered true care…’ This paragraph is interesting to ponder because we live under the illusion that we are an evolved species and yet it seems that we were perhaps better at offering true care in the past. Have we – and are we truly evolving – or do we accept we are just because we have new technology that ‘wows’ us? Perhaps if we measure evolution by the way we live and are with each other we will find that we are not so evolved a species after all.
‘And while we are busy in our heads, we are not at ease in our bodies.’ This is true – it was only on leaving work yesterday and walking gently home beside a field with a beautiful view across the valley that I felt my whole body relax – I hadn’t realised how much I’d been affected by the day’s tension until that moment. For me what tenses me up is trying to ‘get it right’ and that is when my mind plays its ‘I must be perfect’ game. When I am fully connected with every part of my body, there is no tension.
If we spent the day holding ourselves steady with purpose and intimacy we would experience a very different day.
The very fact that we choose entertainment over self-love, or even a drama over being super still with ourselves reveals that we are not choosing to be responsible human beings and instead we are playing games that lead us in circles with no evolution.
‘Looking to fix and cure may prolong our lives, but it does not necessarily enhance the quality of them. But bringing that quality brings a depth and richness to life, no matter how long and short it is, and even if we are confronted with illness and disease.’
I always was looking for this depth and rhichness in my life. Now step by step I get more and more a clue of it through choosing a quality in movement in my day to day life and what kind of transformation this brings to my body and to how I feel. I was and am a lot supported by the Universal Medicine Workshops to understand this science. So thank you Anne for your sharing and clearing the meaning of the words.
Self care has always seemed to be the hardest, but why is this the case? I feel it comes back to not being taught we are worthy of self love, and the push to be better than another {competition} is saying that we aren’t good enough just as we are. To live longer than another or the norm, again seems to be considered an achievement no matter the state of our health.
Awesome blog raising great points of consideration. Our responsibility for our own well-being and societies priority of quantity over quality being two of these. Working in health and social care in the UK the lack of true care is all too apparent. Bringing back a renewed understanding of how we can introduce the forgotten or ignored elements of care once again would be of benefit to us all in our way of living.
When choosing to allow our body to feel again we get an understanding of what feels good in our body and we can start to override those mental pictures that give us those cravings or ideals and beliefs that led to the ill health. Our loving choices have the greatest effect how much we care for ourselves!
We lost the understanding of the fact that illness and disease is our body communicating to us the ills and disharmony of the way we live and the choices we make when we found ways around this by ‘curing’ the symptoms that our body was offering us. In doing so the disharmony and ill was buried deeper and deeper into our bodies leaving and thus forcing our bodies to more and more diverse and extreme ways to try and clear itself from what we have put onto it leaving us now with level of illness and disease in all of humanity that is completely out of control.
I love this Anne, reclaiming the true meaning of the word care. There are so many words that we throw around in our language in the way we use them, yet they lose their meaning if we are not connected to the truth of the word. Your blog is an offering to us all to consider the true meaning of ‘care’.
This is an awesome blog for it addresses how we have given over the responsibility for our health and wellbeing to the health system therefore causing it to be crushed under the weight of our demands.
It seems crazy to me, and I put my hand up for being in this category of thinking, that we rely so much on the need to fix our health issues with very little consideration for why it is there in the first place. Deemed as bad luck or ‘just the way it is’ we say NO to looking at how we are living or taking any responsibility for our choices. There is no true and lasting healing in relying on cures while missing out on the care.
It’s really cool to connect with the history of these words, but not so cool to see how much they have been twisted and reduced to a meaning that completely lacks of the fullness of truth they once offered us.
Incredible article Anne Malatt. There is so much her to sink our teeth into with the many images of what care and cure is to be thrown out with the trash. Thank you for debunking and bringing light to so many areas of illness and disease and the way we as a society are not really handling them. It’s so true, about the want to prolong life but we are not looking at the quality of life we are prolonging, only the triumph of ‘beating’ or ‘fighting’ a disease and getting on top of it. We go for the glory of winning over nature and in that our focus is so narrow that we have lost sight of what illness and disease is telling us about the way we live.
Anne, I love the questions you pose about true care in this blog. Is it possible true care really is this simple? Over the past 8 years of being a student of life, inspired by Serge Benhayon’s presentations, my answer would now be, without hesitation, a resounding Yes. There is so much more, but this is a giant step towards the truth of self care, nothing that can be learnt or done by rote – only lived more fully in every moment of each and every day.
“Could true care be as simple as feeling yourself in your body – from the top of your head to the tips of your fingers and the ends of your toes, and being aware of your whole body as you move, in everything that you do?”
Responsibility and self care brings great change, to health and the quality of living.
‘That is the dilemma we are faced with in modern medicine today – we have the ability to ‘cure’ all sorts of ills, but with what quality are people living, and what is the level of care with which we are delivering these services?’
I recently have been working in an aged care facility where the elderly are being kept alive with a myriad of pills and operations only to be living lives of very little quality. Three times a day they shuffle up on their walkers to eat, then back to their rooms to watch TV and eat some more. This is the sum total of most of their days, except when they are showered and dressed or when the priest comes and gives mass, during which they all nod off to sleep. The other highlight of the week is making decorations for the next public holiday. Really, is this how we want our elderlies to end their days?
‘Illness used to be seen as a reflection of the way we are living and an opportunity to make changes’ This is gold, so simple and obvious of the true purpose of illness and disease.
Wonderful seeing the original meanings of words and how their meanings get change to a convenient one – often one that is devoid of responsibility. I notice when I have something going on that I think needs a cure, what I tend to reach for is what i interpret ‘cure’ to be, i.e. a lack of symptoms, but when I give myself a moment to reflect and feel what is being called for, it is always always greater care, understanding and responsibility.
Why have we come so far from a time when, ‘medicine offered true care. We knew that connection with people mattered, that what we ate affected us, and that there was a true and simple way to live. Illness and disease were seen as a reflection of the way we were living, and an opportunity to make true change’. We have arrogantly supposed that because we have changed life in so many material ways that this offers us an improved quality of life. Quality of life is when we truly connect both to our own innate wisdom and then extend this connection to truly caring for others bringing true healing into our lives as a natural way to live life in brotherhood and equality.
The most effective cure we have for illness is self care and responsibility.
Thus to care for ourselves is in essence to cure ourselves – but a form of cure that has no detrimental side effects.
I love this call for us to reclaim the responsibility we have for our own health and wellbeing. Daunting at first, as we cut away the comfy reliance on others, but very inspiring and empowering when we realise that our choices do shape our lives.
In my experience you cannot truly care without a connection first.
As a parent I often mistake being overprotective with caring. So instead of my children learning how to heal themselves, they could in fact be learning how to be dependent on another to find them a cure.
Lately I have become painfully aware of how much I really ‘care’ for myself and for others in every choice I make in the day. I can make a choice for my own security and protection and imagined safety, but this may be at the expense of others, whom I say I love and care for. Or I can truly care which means for me to deeply honour my connection with myself and with others, knowing that that connection is essential to living a life of quality for all of us, and knowing that I have a responsibility to reflect to others the love that I have connected to in me.
Anne you have reminded me of the phrase ‘take care’ that is commonly used in our language and usually has the meaning of being cautious, tentative, careful. Even the word careful means this today but if we break it down and write it this way “care-full” it actually means to be full of care, consideration and responsibility for ourselves and others which includes not holding back how we feel and not being cautious or reserved at all!
And I have noticed too what an enormous preconception there is about getting older and becoming slower, less clear in the head and generally pretty much on the shelf. Caring for older people tends to be all about making them comfortable (and not a nuisance) rather than inspiring them to make their last years ones of purpose, being part of the community, living and bringing quality to all..
If we were to really commit to our own quality in all we do say and think, our life would definitely change in the direction we know to be true.
This is an important aspect of life Anne, as our quality is very important in all we do say and think, and our responsibility in this is greater than we can ever imagine.
“I don’t care.” is the imprint in most things we see, eat, buy, use, throw away.” It takes dedication and focus to rise our awareness above what these imprints tell us falsely so.
I agree Felix the ‘I don’t care’ message is everywhere. Is it no wonder then that our bodies are reflecting back to us through illness and disease this general lack of care in our societies?
It is a big and valuable step to not just consider the symptom but the whole body when we care about and cure our symptom.
It feels indeed as if we can play God when we look at the medical system we have created which, by the way, is remarkably successful in curing illnesses and diseases, but in that is not touching any of the root causes of these. Although we all know that we should make different choices, these are comfortably avoided. Instead we put our health in the hands of this medical system and with that play for God in thinking that we can delay the deterioration of our bodies that our way of living is causing to it.
I love your point that those in the medical profession have a responsibility to care about the way they live & to reflect that way to others so that they have an opportunity to make the same choices – patients would then get to face their irresponsibility and be less likely to demand a cure.
And upon deeper reflection the same applies to the whole human race – we are all ‘same same but different’ – in reality there is no separation – we are all one!
Even though I have never really thought about the definition of care as opposed to cure, reading your brilliant blog has given me much food for thought. What really stands out for me is the undeniable fact that there is a quintessential relationship between care and cure. The truth is, it is impossible to have one without the other – they go hand in hand – there is no separation.
Wow the link between curing meats and how we treat the human body is very apt as well as sobering. Am I living in a way that is half asleep and not vital but just getting through the years for longevity’s sake without regard for all that I can bring the world should i choose to take responsibility for living life in the fullness of me?
We as a community have certainly given our power away to the medical world in so many ways, and in the process of so doing, we actually impose upon them to ‘fix’ us and have these huge expectations for them to be able to play God and change things for us without us having to make any changes in our life. This is a sad situation to find ourselves in, especially knowing how powerful we each are and can be should we choose to make changes in our life and use the illness and disease as a means to bring us back to a more loving and caring way of living. This is a great article Anne, that really exposes how we have lost our way, but how simply it can be to begin to take responsibility again.
I agree, Henrietta, we are such a solution focussed society and we are always looking at the solutions outside of us. Consultations with health practitioners where we work together on our health issues is an amazing way to heal ourselves and empowers us to be more responsible.
Thank you Anne – and I can add that as a health care practitioner myself, I can instantly feel the difference when a person comes in for a session with the intent to learn to care more deeply for themselves or if they have come in for a solution or a fix and are not really that interested in taking it further. In such situations it truly is the client who either catapults themselves forwards OR alternatively limits their own growth tremendously depending on which intent they have come in with. As the saying goes “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink” – even when offered all the tools and support, the client still must be the one to make the decision to make the change and implement it. A beautiful step up in self care and self responsibility.
As I have learned to care for myself, jobs like washing up after dinner, or ironing my clothes have become part of my self-care routine. Caring for the space around me is as important as caring for me, for in that space I thrive.
I agree, doing a simple activity with love and presence is very nourishing.
Reading this article for about the 4th or 5th time I notice that the word Responsibility stands out for me in the sentence “The original sense of the word was ‘care, concern, responsibility’”. As I’ve actually never related the word Responsibility to care. Not directly. But when I come to think of it, it is actually quite ‘logical’. In the sense that caring holds something gentle if not tender and delicate. And to be able to treat this way, we’re to take responsibility in everything that we do. I love it how the origine of this word actually comes from the word care. That takes a lot of pressure of the word responsibility. It’s not a ‘have to’, but a natural, loving, caring way of being which takes it away from the doing. We need to BE responsible, where as I used to associate responsibility a lot with ‘doing’.
‘In ancient times, medicine offered true care. We knew that connection with people mattered, that what we ate affected us, and that there was a true and simple way to live. Illness and disease were seen as a reflection of the way we were living, and an opportunity to make true change.’ – The thing is, we can still choose to live like this today, and in fact more and more people start to recognise that something is seriously not right with the way our health care system has developed, where hardly anyone takes responsibility for their daily choices and how hugely this affects their health and wellbeing. Though most people are still having an approach to their own ill health condition as something that should be fixed or cured from the outside, by medical aid.
I always find it interesting to discover the etymology of a word. When we look at the original meaning of the word it takes us closer to understanding the real meaning rather than a watered down version we associate with. If the original meaning of “care” includes the concept of ‘responsibility, particularly in a spiritual sense’ this speaks volumes about the way we have reduced the meaning of the word and reduced the concept of ‘care’ in modern life!
Self care and love-true medicine we can give ourselves and yet this simply truth is resisted forcefully. I work in social care and witness daily in the elderly the consequences of self neglect on mind and body many of whom did not have access to information on how to care for themselves. Certainly people are living longer but what is the point without quality and health in their lives.
I have also found that the more I am in my body, the less anxiety I have; the mind just wants to race off with any thought at all but the body has a beautiful steadiness.
I love what you’ve written here Anne, self-care is actually super simple as it is about the honouring of oneself and so to live and bring this way of living to all that we do and what we experience is a huge advantage to both our health and wellbeing. To live carelessly on the other hand, must also have an impact on our bodies and health; is this then when we seek a cure or a fix to our experience or ill health?
Responsibility truly is the key I feel and I love that you’ve shared the ancient meanings of the words. The hospital where I practice actually has one of these words within its name and (like a little piece of a puzzle) this understanding has reminded me what my purpose and responsibility is in continuing to bring my true care beneath its roof and within a system where such care is completely lacking.
Anne your blog brings up the big question of ‘how’ we actually want to live our lives. Its not just about how we care for our ill, which is a huge topic in itself, but how do we care for ourselves in the everyday choices we make?
We often view illness as an inconvenience, something that stops us living the way we want to, and interrupts our way of life. This is great if it that we can develop a deeper awareness in the body to care more deeply for ourselves in the true sense of the word, and not have a cure that removes the illness to allow us to continue the old ways. The body is offering us an opportunity here to do something different.
Our ‘caring’ can be reduced to maintaining the status quo, or not rocking the boat. Do we care enough to actually express the truth? ‘To say and do what is needed, rather than what people want to hear.’ This is a whole new ball game and takes some practice if you are not used to it, however I am discovering, there is no point waiting for others to speak up. Its something I have to initiate for myself if I truly care.
What you’ve shared in this Anne is spot on. Medicine today is more of a ‘patchwork’ industry rather than a tool to truly heal – plastic surgery, tumour removal, gastric bypasses and so forth are now becoming some of the most popular treatments, which are excellent for band-aiding a problem but don’t really address the cause of it. The incredible medical technology we have today can work against us in this manner – allowing us to calm symptoms and illnesses in the short term but never look at the root cause, or it can support us to address the whole picture of illness, disease and lifestyle… It’s all about how we utilise it.
To care or to cure – can we reunite the two and deliver true health care once again?
With the true meanings and quality we certainly can and how amazing that this is being shown to us all by Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon leading the way for humanity in all it is offering us in being who we innately are and the responsibility and purpose we all have with this and the true loving care we all deserve.
A brilliant article and discussion Anne on care and cure and what it truly means and how we have lost and changed the true meanings with our bodies thank you a real revelation presented this way. The truth about true caring and the difference of curing and fixing needs to be seen and discussed for the quality of how we are all living and the repercussions of this is felt by the whole medical system and the enormity of illness and disease currently rising exponentially in the world. It really does all come down to quality and this comes down to our individual responsibility that effects the all and is known by us all if we truly make the space to feel it.
To understand the difference between care and cure in the context of healing is profound Anne, we have acquired many misconceptions around it that end up leaving us in a far lesser quality of life than we could otherwise have. Part and parcel of this to me is understanding what purpose a life has. If it is to enjoy ourselves in the massive playing field we have available to us, carving out our own idea of a good life, then length of life and quality of living we seek will take very different priorities to a purpose that holds its value in restoring something that continuously deepens the quality within us.
This article, shows me that the more proficient medicine becomes, the less responsibility (care) individuals take for their own health. This in turn puts more pressure on the medical system and so they opt for cure rather than care, because no one cared about themselves in the first place.
Interesting the point you raise Anne about the double meaning of cure. Meat or other products were originally cured by adding preservatives like salt, because there was a need to make food last because of a scarcity of it, say in winter. So it was a necessary measure while knowing that over time, the nutrient value diminished through the preserving process and as you stated, the life or I would add vitality in the food diminished. We can also prolong life through medicine and yet not preserve the vitality and purpose behind life – such as you often see in nursing homes, where the common expression is that inmates often live for the meal time as it becomes the most exciting part of the day and otherwise have very limited quality of life. This seems a long way from caring to me. Supporting life with cures for the purpose of prolonging it has no true life and vitality left in it and I would add, actually may prevent something from undertaking its natural cycle.
True care is a commitment to feel all that there is to feel – feel all of ourselves and feel the other. We then know what to do.
It’s funny to look at the simplest things a little deeper. Like you have here Anne with ‘Care and Cure’. I wouldn’t have put these two words together necessarily and now when I read them side by side in the heading I can see how very very similar they are. I am not surprised to see that they originated from the same word but what is also interesting is how we have taken them on very different roads, to the point where they now mean something totally different. Is this what progress is about? Taking things that initially were the same and making them different, in this case and as in many other cases it appears that we lose the true meaning when we do this. As you have stated Anne, it looks time to bring things truly back together so everything makes sense, thank you.
It is true that it is a dilemma that we today have a medical treatment for most illnesses – could it be that some medical institutions / doctors are feeling obliged or even under pressure to conduct treatments to prolong life, that does not in truth serve the patient and that the patient themselves may not even want?’
There is a need for us as a society to discern once again the quality we live by and not just look for sustaining life for the sake of living longer. But of course, by reducing ourselves to being mortal beings that disappear with physical death, we will do everything to not die, as there is nothing else beyond and or to come back to or move on to. Somehow we have robbed ourselves from who we are to then live as who we are not, until we return to a way of living that honours our true nature, our divinity and hence our legacy we come back to, as it is with us when we move on from life to life.
The word ‘care’ referring to concern, responsibility immediately gives a sense of its true meaning; there is connection and relationship between the carer and the cared for, a quality that naturally comes with it. The true meaning of words is known by the whole body-mind.
As long as we see the body as a mere instrument or object that we can do what we want with, we will only seek fixing not healing when it fails in some way or another. The intent to heal can only come from embracing and honouring the body as an expression of who we are.
Redeveloping a sense of the original meaning of care and cure, as you present here, means reconnecting to something we actually know in our bodies; the body knows how it feels to care and be cared for, how to cure itself, heal itself, but we need to restore this innate sense that lays dormant until we access it again.
It seems in our obsession with making everything fit our neatly controlled images, we have changed the meaning of care in your original description :”We knew that connection with people mattered, that what we ate affected us, and that there was a true and simple way to live. Illness and disease were seen as a reflection of the way we were living, and an opportunity to make true change”. We have changed it from one of harmony with the rest of life, to one that is lead by us imposing whatever is our current image onto our own life / body and on another person’s life / body if we are in the caring profession. Yet this way is not sustainable and the loud and clear messages from our bodies and our environment will sooner or later prompt us to realise that we ARE in fact connected to the whole and the only care and cure is through returning to a life that honours that.
It is worth further consideration, the distortion of the the understanding of the word care to careful. If our lives were truly care-full or full of care, not the caution variety but the consideration and self regard variety, things would start to look a little different. I know that 10 years of playing with that benchmark of care in my life has transformed me.
Our desire to prolong life at every cost is an indication that we consider being alive in a poor state as better than not. But as someone who believes we reincarnate, and moreover that we do so in the energetic quality we leave this planet, it makes sense to me that we look for real care and cure, and not fixes to mask the choices that created the illness. That is a point we perhaps still are a long way from having accepted by society, but one that I feel makes complete sense and worthy of consideration in place of the fight, battle and struggle we make life to be.
I think it was Albert Einstein who said that the definition of insanity is to keep repeating the same action, but expect a different result. Chasing cures and quick fixes allow us to keep repeating the same choices without actually connecting to the fact that it is not truly supporting us.
This blog has made me aware of how words and language becomes distorted over time and how we become lazy in our use of words. Are the words adapted to suit our lives and lifestyle or are they adapted to make the choices we make more comfortable? There is much to ponder here.
Reuniting care and cure together needs the definitions to be tweaked, to lovingly look after ourselves by living in truth with every word, thought and deed while taking responsibility for our true care working on our own quality of living in every minute would be caring and curing for our true health.
How amazing would it be if all doctors, practitioners and health workers saw their role as one of inspiration in which they, through their choices and livingness, reflected the choices we ourselves could be making to live a quality of life that is vital, joyful and full. What a different world it would be.
We only really start to afford ourselves true care when we begin to take responsibility for our lifestyle choices. This way I’ve found I can bring change to the quality of my health, and how I approach and interact with my health care professionals such as dentists, doctors and complementary health practitioners.
Great points you make Anne, that really highlight how far we have moved away from being responsible for the choices we make in life to instead looking for and accepting quick fixes that will allow us to continue to ignore the fact that the way that we live is a reflection of the care we give or don’t give ourselves.
It is ridiculous that we go looking for “cures” to fix an issue so that we can return to the behaviours that got us into the situation in the first place. Athletes are a classic example of this but so are all the lifestyle disease that are becoming increasingly prevalent. We want a pill or injection to control our blood sugar so that we can continue to eat food that does not support our bodies. It is time that we started looking at the underlying causes of our ill choices.
Getting to the truth in healing can be confronting especially when we are so used to making things right or making things better and making people comfortable. To keep people comfortable we have to deny truth, which means no healing at all. True care may mean telling the truth which may hold no comfort at all yet is truly full of love.
Your definition, Anne offers us a real opportunity to understand the way we have been living making life about living longer with no true impulse to look at the quality. We have been ‘curing’ ourselves like a piece of meat, where we extend our life in a way that prolongs the shelf life with no thought of whether we are taking responsibility for how we have been living or what we are offering future generations by way of evolution.
Do we want a life of richness, of quality, irrespective of the length of it, or do we want to prolong life at all costs? This simple sentence speaks truth and makes us realize are we taking responsibility for our health care? We have choices…. which one are you choosing?
This blog exposes the extent of our irresponsibility, in creating our own diseases, receiving free treatment from the national health services or having an operation, and then going back to the same behaviour afterwards. It is a tall order to expect the health services to cope with the demands of this modern day indifference to how our choices affect everything and everyone around us.
We are making a big mistake by hiding the elderly and sick people away – they should be more visible, more shown on TV, etc. We need to see the rot and the misery and the loneliness they are in maybe that would shake us up and make us aware that it is not worth it to trash ones body and live a careless life when we are young as the consequences are horrible.
A great subject you are raising here Anne, is it really progress and successful to prolong life when we in fact are losing the quality of life? I definitely feel it is worth more to focus on quality than a long life lived in misery and pain, rotting away. This is not something to wish on anyone.
A really interesting blog Anne. It seems that with the increase in technology, particularly medical, has come the increase of irresponsibility for our health and how we are choosing to live; instead asking for another to ‘fix’ this or get rid of an ailment or dis-ease that is there. From my experience and by observing others I have found the complete opposite in what you say here ‘And we ‘care’ about ourselves too much to say it as it is, to deal with people’s reactions, to not be liked, to get it ‘wrong’’. In that we do not truly care for ourselves; there is definietly a lack of true self-love and self-care currently in the world today. Also from my experience I definitely agree with what you say that ‘true care is about us developing a relationship with our bodies’. How many of us go through the day feeling tense or anxious and consider this as normal! Yet it is our body lovingly telling us that something is not right in the way we are living. I love what you have presented about true care and how cure is the quality in which we live, this is so important.
Care is a feeling we have towards ourselves and others, it is an extension of our loving heart, it spreads a warmth and it is not found in ticking boxes, fitting an outer picture or merely performing certain deeds unless we do them in the quality of caring.
I can so relate Anne, working in the beauty industry, which is entirely geared at fixing and covering up the traces that our excessive lifestyle leaves us with and then effects our looks, our appearance and our radiance. Instead of taking responsibility in the way we treat our bodies which then leads to a healthier look and natural glow on our faces and skin.
When you move with awareness, it looks quite similar to moving with care but it is quite different from being careful, which is more of a quite possibly justified reaction from past hurts in this particular case.
Maybe if we brought more attention to this area of how we are living we would see the importance of developing it.
This is a very valid point Anne, when I see the health care systems and the quality in which they are run along with the quality of life the elderly are living I see much more turmoil than ever before, and yet we live at a time where we have advanced like lightening speed in all areas of technology but at what price. Money seems to have been spent on building the latest software but what about the time spent on the quality of how we live each day, what our movements are and how we interact with others. These are the areas that need addressing well before we start moving onto making technology work more efficiently.
The more this blog and it’s Wisdom sinks in, the more I realise how much we’ve given our responsibility and care for ourselves away and have made the staff of our beautiful hospitals, elderly homes, psychologists, etc. responsible for our own ill choices. How can we expect others to ‘fix us’ and be responsible for our own choices? And why have these people taken on the enormous responsibility? In my view almost everyone on this planet has made this life about either helping people or rebel to people. Which in fact is one and the same when fully understood. I’ve been the one always wanting to support others, but in Truth this has been the greatest distraction to not be responsible for myself. I didn’t make it about my own evolution, but about other’s evolution. How amazing would it be if True Care and True Cure would be re-established and we would be cared for in a very natural, loving and Truthful way? So that we’re getting the opportunity to heal the root causes of what had finally created the illness or disease.
Thank you Anne that was a revealing blog to read. I am not sure if most of us are so aware of what you have presented so clearly about care and cure. It inspired me to be more aware about the quality I want to live in and if other readers are inspired in the same way would mean they would change their way of living as well – how beautiful is that.
Most people with a terminal illness, would choose cure over care, not realising that with that choice they are also choosing to remain in the cycle of illness. Only care can bring us out of the cycle forever.
Such a great blog Anne, exposing where we have come from to where we are not in the true meaning of the words care and cure. Along with the irresponsibility that has now come about from the choices of many. We are now at a time in society where we do need to look at how we are living and our choices around illness and disease. Not for it to be handed over to doctors or medics, but to look after ourselves with such care so as to not burden the medical system, learn what it means for us to cure ourselves.
A great blog, thank you Anne, outlining the great difference between care and cure. It certainly is the case that since the development of modern medicine, the great emphasis is on endeavouring to cure all ailments. But is any true care being taken in following this course? In so many cases, we seem to have developed such an incredible irresponsibility nowadays. Many of us give no thought whatsoever to how we are living our lives, we eat whatever appeals to us, we do not look after ourselves, work long days, have very busy nights with numerous distractions and then wonder why we do not sleep well. All this takes such a toll on the quality of our lives and then when we feel really unwell, we go off to the doctor to be rescued from whatever has come up for the body, expecting him/her to bring the great miracles of modern medicine to our aid. We think we can do as we like, then just pop some pills, or have a quick surgery job and all will be okay. When it becomes more serious, we expect the doctor to fix us somehow. And when sometimes all is fixed, so many just go back to the way they had been living before the ailment appeared. All this is costing taxpayers dearly in the hugely rising health costs to all nations. We have rapidly soaring cases of various ailments, especially diabetic issues. So many of these problems are completely avoidable if people truly cared for themselves. It is time for us all to take personal responsibility for ourselves, to listen to the messages that our bodies send us from time to time, rather than to wait for the big message from the doctor at some point telling us that we have a terminal case of cancer. Responsibility is the big word for us all to take to heart.
“To care or to cure – can we reunite the two to deliver true health care once again” absolutely if we are willing to be honest with ourselves, letting go of things and actions that are not truly supporting us and take back full responsibility for our choices and embrace taking loving care of ourselves.
There is much in the dynamics of the doctor and patient relationship. I often see doctors anxious and stressed knowing there is an expectation for them to have all the answers, and then hear patients blaming doctors for not ‘fixing’ them. The missing ingredient in this equation is responsibility, and if we were each to take responsibility for our own health, doctors and patients alike, it would take a lot of pressure off our current health care system.
Medicine has become ‘them and us’ with doctors in fix-it mode and patients dis-empowering themselves by handing over their care to the doctors, rather than clinicians and patients working together equally, each taking responsibility for their part. As you present here Anne, physicians have a responsibility to live a caring way that will inspire all they meet, and likewise, patients have a responsibility in how they live, and their own health and vitality too.
It is such a shame that we have adopted this way of being and living our lives. It is not just in the healthcare system but through institutions and companies worldwide. We have given away our equalness and our responsibility by adopting cases of superiority through management and leadership by thinking others know better or that we know more than another. For sure we all have our own skill set which differs greatly from person to person but that does not mean we give away the responsibility for ourselves and our choices.
I found it super interesting to learn about the origin of these words and to consider how we often use them now. Thank you Anne – I loved reading this.
“Illness and disease were seen as a reflection of the way we were living, and an opportunity to make true change.” Understanding this has shifted the way I view illness. I now welcome what being sick offers me, an opportunity to connect with how I have been living, the choices I have been making and why I may not be feeling my usual self. The body doesn’t lie. My job is to listen to it.
‘Could true care be developing a relationship with our bodies?’ And could this in turn change the whole way we live as a society? Taking the pressure of the ‘health’ system and embracing the responsibility ourselves to take care.
Hello Anne
I love reading your articles. ‘Our physicians have also become more irresponsible, choosing to focus on the cure, the quick fix, rather than taking care of the way they live, and then reflecting that living way to us, inspiring us to learn to live it to.’ So true. How can a physician fully understand the benefits of a healthy diet and lifestyle if they first are not experiencing it? Common sense that has been left behind.
It is interesting in the light of this article how as a society we seem to approach illness and disease. We tend to go for getting a ‘cure’ in order to get rid of the exact message from our body that is flagging that we need to apply more ‘care’ in life, without bothering to even consider what is being reflected about our choices.
This seems to be an inevitable question, “Do we want a life of richness, of quality, irrespective of the length of it, or do we want to prolong life at all costs?” It would seem we are focused on the numbers and so live into your 90’s or to 100 and you have done well, no matter where you quality of life is at. As you are saying Anne bring back the quality. Some may say ‘quality over quantity’ every time and this would be my view that I see in every part of life.
Very interesting, if you look up the meaning of illness and disease, in Latin, these words do not exist! Totally supporting what Anne is saying.
Do we truly care about ourselves and others when we are not expressing truth? We fear truth, yet it is the most caring thing we can bring into our relationships. When I truly care about myself and another, I express how I feel and say what needs to be said.
Its easy to skim over the word ‘care’ and give ourselves token gestures of it…’Could true care be as simple as feeling yourself in your body – from the top of your head to the tips of your fingers and the ends of your toes, and being aware of your whole body as you move, in everything that you do?’ This takes care to a whole new level and defines the word with a deeper meaning and action.
Interesting that despite all our seeming progress we have lost our inner knowing and whereas previously ‘Illness and disease were seen as a reflection of the way we were living, and an opportunity to make true change.’ Now it is often regarded as an inconvenience and we try and get back to our previous way of living as soon as possible without ever taking responsibility for the way we had been living and the fact that this may well have contributed to whatever was wrong with us. Reuniting caring and curing for ourselves and others offers us the opportunity to turn around our current health crisis and deliver true health and wellbeing to humanity.
I love how responsibility is within the original meaning of the term ‘curer’ – as this is something that has been obscured in current times totally evident in how we live… Many things considered normal everyday living, including recreational drugs, binge drinking, wild all night partying, smoking, even overwork, just to name a few popular past-times, are actually deeply harmful to the body… and it is only when the body breaks down, that people start to reconsider their lifestyle.. So what if we started from a foundation of self-responsibility and to make choices in life based on what was truly caring for the body, to keep it working vital, alive and alert, rather than dulled down, or racy, in nervous energy etc. What if our bodies naturally know what is true for it, and what harms it and we can take back full self-empowerment through self-responsibility to live according to its wisdom.
The point that you have made about cycles is really important, especially in this context of curing and caring. It is as if our ideas of curing and caring tend to fight against the idea that life is a movement, or a flow from one state to the next to the next. The idea of care, as in ‘be careful’, is tied up with ‘please don’t do something that might change anything’, and so it automatically brings a sense of holding back from what you might otherwise express or experience. This is not to say we should be reckless, but our lives are forever shifting and we are always being presented with opportunities to evolve. Being careful about these is not living life.
‘Do we want a life of richness, of quality, irrespective of the length of it, or do we want to prolong life at all costs?’ Anne, this is such a huge question, and one where I feel we as society have lost the sense of what a rich and valuable life truly is about. The majority as well as the over all medical system is in my experience all about prolonging life, to the extent that you are being seen as unaccountable and not in your right mind if you choose differently.
The way we can care, can prevent true healing and exposes the falsity in which we think we care. It is a great discussion point around the way we currently care.
Medicine is so advanced now that it can extend a person’s life for many years, which in many instances is fantastic and gives the person a new lease of life, but in other instances, particularly in aged care facilities, elderly people are medicated so heavily just to keep them alive with zero quality of life, sometimes in a vegetative type state. I certainly don’t have an answer to this and am not suggesting anything by it, but simply asking if keeping a person alive no matter what should be the goal or keeping a person free of pain and allowing them to graciously passover when they are ready is.
So once upon a time, we had the awareness that how we lived, what we ate and drank affected us and somewhere along the way, with the development of medicine, surgery and other treatments, we began to rely on these ‘cures’ and less on taking the ‘care’ in how we lived. It seems like we’ve come so far with medicine and yet illness is on the rise, and our medical and health systems can’t keep up with demand and the complications with illness now. Coming back to the simplicity of taking care in how we live and being responsible for what we consume seems a way forward, or part of our way back to what we once knew, and still do, but choose to ignore or plead ignorant to.
Love how you describe here the beginnings of disease in the context of true care Anne “What happens to our bodies when we are ‘careful’ in a way that is not true? We tend to tense up, contract, and hold our muscles hard. We tend to go into our heads, worrying about what we should do, what we should say, how we should be. And while we are busy in our heads, we are not at ease in our bodies..” it’s crucial to understand the starting point to catch dis-ease and take care it doesn’t develop into disease and illness.
I know that when I take care – in the true sense of the word ‘care’ – life flows, there’s an ease and an easiness within my whole body. It is therefore a great reminder that when this ease is no longer felt, I can come back to that connection with my body and give myself a renewed dose of ‘primary care’.
What you describe here Anne is a master of the Art and Science of Life and Healing; “…taking care of the way they live, and then reflecting that living way to us, inspiring us to learn to live it too.”
It is amazing how we can change the meaning of words by changing the context of how we use them. So many words that would support us in their true meaning have been bastardised or reduced from their original meaning. Thank you Anne for making us aware of the changes we have made with the words ‘care’ and ‘cure’. I feel we are all responsible for letting words slip, demeaning words and reducing them so they no longer come with the power or the use they were originally intended for.
Agreed Alison!
‘Do we want a life of richness, of quality, irrespective of the length of it, or do we want to prolong life at all costs?’ –what a pertinent question in today’s society -one which is heavily focused on cure not care. People are living longer but what is the quality.
You only need to look at the residents occupying aged care facilities- most in pull out chairs suffering with senile dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. They have lost their connection to their bodies and Soul.
A problem we have as a society is that we are heavily invested in the short term gains rather than looking at the long term investments. We tend to only look at things when they’re relevant to us at that moment, but this is usually clouded and muddied by emotions. It seems we need to step back and take responsibility for all of our invested choices and feel whether these truly support us as individuals and as a society, because the evidence is showing us that they do not.
“To care or to cure – can we reunite the two and deliver true health care once again?” Anne thanks for sharing how far from true health we are today, how many steps we have to take but at the same time reminding us we already know this, we already lived true medicine in the past. If we put aside outcomes and focused on care and quality perhaps everything in our healthcare system and life would change?
Absolutely Jane, “It’s good to unpick ‘ these (words) so as to bring clarity back – and bring responsibility back”. It seems we will go to any lengths to avoid taking responsibility for our choices even to the extent of exploiting words so they no longer are representative of their true meaning.
You make a good point here about the way our physicians live: ‘Our physicians have also become more irresponsible, choosing to focus on the cure, the quick fix, rather than taking care of the way they live, and then reflecting that living way to us, inspiring us to learn to live it to.’ We can inspire other people by the way we live, imagine the role models our society would have if all physicians lived truly healthy lives themselves?
Your comment Anne about curing also applying to meats and skins really stuck with me. The human race spends a lot of time curing our bodies with the things we consume and do. Caffeine, cigarettes, alcohol, sugar, salt, sun bathing are some excellent ways to dry out our skins and internal organs. If we do it enough we can turn ourselves into walking mummies!
Thank you, Anne. “What happens to our bodies when we are ‘careful’ in a way that is not true?” This question made me stop in my tracks and consider all the different ways that we hold ourselves – whether it is to be respectful, polite, disciplined, in control, protected etc. I could feel that none of these are true. They create a constant state of tension in the body and, as you say, we are not at ease with or within ourselves but rather in disharmony, creating conditions for a myriad of illnesses.
Anne – you make such a huge point here about how we now use medicine. We seem to have rapidly advanced in treatments, tablets, medication – and yet we have more illness and disease than ever before. So the question is why are we accepting to live in a way where medicine becomes part of the norm? And perhaps the huge gap we are not wanting to see is, as you say, our lifestyle choices. The absolute responsibility we have of what body we take to the doctor in the first place. What is our quality? These are things we no longer consider because we think the doctor will fix us, And yet, if we are honest, we know we live in a way that is not as supportive as it could be. Developing a relationship with our bodies first is our choice to say ‘I want to be responsible and I want to be aware’
Anne, this is an eye opener..’Could true care be a commitment to making our every move – our every thought, word and action – loving and caring, for ourselves and for others?’ This kind of commitment, to the best of our ability, requires constant focus with everything we are saying and doing in our everyday lives, not for 5 minutes, but for the whole of our waking day. That knocks out the occasional caring thought or deed as true care, that amount of dedication and responsibility is ours to accept and realise as true care.
It will be an amazing time when our doctors are reflections of responsibility, when our nurses offer us the reflection of deep self care and when our surgeons offer us the reflection of self love and delicacy. The power of reflection has the ability to communicate deeply to another, it is a language that our whole body understands.
Anne another thing that was highlighted for me whilst reading your article is how we knew more about true medicine in our past than we do now. You share that in ancient times ‘Illness and disease were seen as a reflection of the way we were living, and an opportunity to make true change’ and yet this is something that humanity is only just beginning to remember, despite all of our ‘advances’ in medicine. I wonder where our health would be now if we hadn’t lost sight of this fact.
It is amazing how words are stripped of their true and original meaning over time. What would our health system look like if ‘cure’ and ‘care’ had remained in what they originally had to offer? It feels to me that it would be much simpler and we would still have an understanding and acceptance of our responsibility in all of this.
Anne on reading your description of true care in ancient times ‘We knew that connection with people mattered, that what we ate affected us, and that there was a true and simple way to live’, it felt like I was reading a description of The Way of the Livingness, which Serge Benhayon has brought through to support humanity to find their way back to truth.
Anne such a great investigation into two such small but oh so significant words. Having read your article it dawned on me that cure does not necessarily contain care and indeed care does not necessarily contain cure.
A healing consists of a patient, a physician and a treatment. Today we focus on the treatment, ignore the physician and are not quite sure what to do with an individual patient.
It feels like we are no longer caring for ourselves because there is almost a cure for every one of our bad choices, so why should we bother! The disharmony we are causing in our body provides the fertile bed that develops the multi-disease scenario. We have the ability to halt our march to the edge of the cliff just by making different choices and start by caring for ourselves.
Thank you for making that distinction between ‘care’ and ‘cure’ and I can certainly feel how weak this ‘caring’ has become in the way we use it in our daily language where it is more about being cautious and tiptoeing around an issue or person.
Thank you for sharing your insight with us Anne. I would certainly prefer the option of living a quality life as opposed to a long and painful one, just for the sake of longevity.
I agree that we do need to look at the reason for our illness in the first instance rather than a quick fix and back to our old habits again without having learned about our responsibility of caring for our bodies, and therefore being a living example for others to follow.
Brilliant!!!
Absolutely!
From what you have presented Anne, true care is all-encompassing – it is a way of life that naturally upholds responsibility to everyone and everything in every moment.
A great statement here …”“Could true care be developing a relationship with our bodies?”… Rather than a tick box approach, actually responding to how the body feels, for example, recognising the feeling to change diet, resting instead of pushing on to run that extra lap, stay up late instead of acknowledging when you are tired, are all ways of bringing more honesty and hence care to the body.
I am (like I know you are Anne Malatt) very pro medicine and a firm believer in getting the right medical treatment if and when required, I do how ever feel we need to tackle the idea of why illness has become a thing that gets in the way and needs to be cured so we can live our lives how ever we want to. I really enjoyed your exploration of words and conversation on care and cure and your approach to modern medicine.
When I consider and feel the fact that our body is actually the end result of every choice we have ever made, it brings up responsibility and the part that must be played to return the body to feeling the vitality that is within just waiting to be felt.
The shift in medicine from taking full responsibility for the whole being to literally focusing on the isolated or offending part says so much about our transgression away from true health. It was at this point that we thought that we could get away with simply patching ourselves up with band aid measures when in truth we needed to feel our deviation away from the way we were living. So no wonder illness just keeps rising and rising as we keep patching and patching. At some point, patching will just not be enough.
It’s interesting that the words cure and care come from the same origin and yet now they are so far apart in how we use them. It’s definitely something worth pondering on more deeply about what care actually is and the effect of aiming for ‘cure’ and what this means.
Anne, I have never seen the word careful as meaning cautious, controlled but this is precisely what I am saying when I use it, thank you for bringing my awareness to it as I will now observe what is really going on when I use it.
New drugs, procedures and technology will never bring back quality of life, for that we have to start making loving choices for ourselves; only then will we start to see a shift in the quality of the lives we live.
I’m always amazed just how supportive and caring it is to stop what I am doing, connect and feel my body from my head to my toes. I feel the tension of the day release as I draw my attention to certain parts of my body and feel a delicacy replace the areas of hardness I had created.
“Could true care be a commitment to making our every move – our every thought, word and action – loving and caring, for ourselves and for others?” This is a major part of it for me and actually when I see myself less caring with others I have to stop and ask myself what is happening in me. Bizarrely I have found it incredibly selfish NOT to care for me as I then am too exhausted and resentful to care for another. What a turnaround!
Thank you Anne, there are so many parts of this blog that struck me as monumental in their importance that I feel it will be one I explore many times as it percolates in my body! One of the standout lines for me was “Modern medicines are powerful, and sometimes a helpful treatment can become a harmful poison”. I have found this many times over if I have been looking to fix an illness rather than change the behaviour that led to the illness. A great example is a cold. I used to run myself into the ground and then try to get rid of the symptoms rather than actually stop and rest…so the medicine I took to keep me going was a poison to my body as it deepened the illness further into my body and I got much worse a few weeks later.
This is exactly what is going on ‘ Now, we see illness and disease as a nuisance, an inconvenience, to be fixed, gotten rid of, cured, so we can get back to doing what we were doing before. And more and more we have come to place the responsibility for this onto our doctors and healers, and less and less onto ourselves and our way of life.’ We really do believe that if we’re in a bad way, someone else will be able to sort us out. We have completely given our power to something outside of ourselves. Yes, we absolutely need the support of medicine and healing, but our attitude towards it is very much ‘here, fix me, I’m broken.’ Without self responsibility, we have very little chance of preventing further dis-ease.
You’ve really cracked the bastardisation of those words Anne. I’ve never looked at the word ‘care’ to be how you’ve described, but it all makes perfect sense, as I have absolutely very tentatively been careful with everything…almost like being on eggshells so as not to break anything! That has created enormous tension in my body for years as a result. Holding it all back, keeping ‘safe’. It’s no wonder I’m currently dealing with medical issues that reflect all these choices. I now have a real opportunity to reconsider ‘care’.
This truly exposes humanity’s timeline from responsibility to total lack of responsibility for our own health – a place where we now hand our bodies over to medicine to fix it so we can continue our irresponsible ways. As you share here Anne, we need to bring true care back – where each one of us chooses to be honest about the choices we have made and to be responsible for the way we live – living a loving and vital quality of life that inspires everyone we meet to also live this way… and in this way we take back responsibility for our own health.
Developing a loving and caring relationship with ourselves is an empowering form of medicine, one that I am constantly discovering more and more how it not only returns the responsibility of well-being to where it naturally belongs, but also opens up our awareness so we can explore the depth of healing and insight that this relationship, this living medicine offers to all of us. A way of living that is in connection to who we are, to the life we are part of and the life we are all here to live.
Your dissection of the way the word care is used exposes how little care there actually is for many of us. Introducing care for self as normal would bring a huge shift in society, illicit drugs might disappear, alcohol too, and what about overeating? Much would change if true care were part of life.
What a brilliant article showing the how caring and responsibility in medicine, health care and general everyday living has been re-interpreted in a way that actually brings harm to our bodies – like the example of caring about not upsetting people so not expressing what people need to hear in order to arrest choices which harm them/others. How wonderful to bring back what true care is to our awareness. I love the lines,
‘Could true care be a willingness to feel what is there to be felt, and to honour our feelings, to be aware of what is truly going on within and around us?
‘Could true care be a commitment to making our every move – our every thought, word and action – loving and caring, for ourselves and for others?’
When we appreciate the loving care we give ourselves, we start to truly appreciate others too and notice even the smallest of details of that loving care in them and in ourselves as well.
Awesome blog Anne… working in health I have been feeling the lack of care within the system, and it is on all levels and in all areas. It has become very much about the individual and what they can get out of the system – and this relates to both patients and staff alike. However as you present here, the quality lived can be brought to all that we do, and so the richness of the loving care we give ourselves is felt by all others we meet and can be an inspiration for them to bring that same quality into their lives too.
‘Do we want a life of richness, of quality, irrespective of the length of it, or do we want to prolong life at all costs?’ – another great question Anne, that when we choose to connect we all know the answer to. There is a world of difference between quality of life and the length of life lived, this we know if we are willing to be honest. What is the point of living longer if the life lived is vacant of the fullness and richness of our Soul, an empty vessel aimlessly wandering and stumbling through life for what? Connection to our essence, our Soul, our bodies and each other is what give us all the quality and richness of life that in truth is what we all are seeking.
Thank you Anne for ever so clearly pointing out the extent to which our irresponsibility and dis-empowerment has developed as a society. By choosing to live in ignorance of the choices we make regardless of the dis-ease we are calling onto ourselves, we then seek and expect that a quick fix from our doctor will make it all better with the least amount of disruption to our lives so we can continue to live in our pattern of irresponsibility. You have asked great questions that to me point to the fact that we are avoiding the truth when we live this way. Yet the truth is ever-present, a reflection of who we are in essence, and so truth is always calling us to be more, to look deeper, to look within by signalling to us through our bodies that all is not well when we choose ignore what is our natural and Divine way.
“Could true care be developing a relationship with our bodies?” – could it indeed mean this? Then through this relationship, we would know what was good and not good medicine in our daily lives. True care then would be saying no to certain activities, food or drink that leave our body feeling flat, stressed, in pain…anything less than what it can feel.
If we made a commitment about making our moves, thoughts and actions loving for ourselves and others, this would take ‘care’ of our health and the state of our medical industry.
“Looking to fix and cure may prolong our lives, but it does not necessarily enhance the quality of them.” – so true Anne and what is the point if an illness is ‘cured’ via an operation, medication or treatment but with no change made in how the person lives. The symptoms may be gone, but the lived energy is the same and so it is likely that another condition or illness will present itself.
Great analogy re ‘cure’ and ‘care’ Anne. Often we are not living true care in connection to our bodies, willing to feel what is there. That is when complication can set in, when we are living from our heads yet absent from the body.
I love that you have exposed Anne that when we are careful, there is a contraction in how we move and in our bodies and this is not true care. True care is being fully in our body and not holding back in any way. I can feel for myself how much I have held back trying to be care -ful. Yet it is worlds apart from true care.
This is a ground-breaking blog, thank you Anne. I love all your examples of what True Care could be, but the simple one that stands out for me at the moment is “Could true care be as simple as feeling yourself in your body – from the top of your head to the tips of your fingers and the ends of your toes, and being aware of your whole body as you move, in everything that you do?” That feels a great way for us all to start to feel what true care could be, a very simple part of a journey to really feeling just who we are, and how important it is for us to learn to take true care of ourselves. We have lost our connections to ourselves, we are far too much guiding ourselves through our thinking heads, it is time to let the body have far more say in how we do things, that would be a much more caring way to live.
Thank you Anne for sharing you understanding of care or cure, it seems with the word care or true care comes the word responsibility with how we treat ourselves and our bodies. Cure seems to be the covering up or burying of the issue or illness with drugs etc with little responsibility of why we have the ill health or problem in the first place.
“Could true care be as simple as feeling yourself in your body – from the top of your head to the tips of your fingers and the ends of your toes, and being aware of your whole body as you move, in everything that you do?” This should be the first thing taught not only in medical schools but to everyone from a young age. If we are brought up understanding the meaning of true care and we nurture this and make true care about how we choose to live, then we would see a massive difference to the current rate of illness and disease.
I love that the original definition of care and cure were the same and the words care and responsibility were combined in the one meaning. We have come to see responsibility as a burden, hard work or that we are to blame. However there is deep care and love on offer for ourselves when we take care of ourselves. I have found taking responsibility for my health and state of being has been empowering, as I know the fuel and way of being that keeps my body and being in balance. It is my choice and my opportunity to keep refining my care as I learn from my body
“Illness and disease were seen as a reflection of the way we were living, and an opportunity to make true change”. This is what we need to circle back to in our understanding and practical living. There has been a move away from personal responsibility, as over time it has been laden with many false ideas, such as illness being a punishment by God or a sin. We have lost our willingness to see illness and disease as an opportunity for healing. It is only through understanding the energetic root cause of illness and disease and how to work in harmony with my body that this has changed for me.
“In ancient times, medicine offered true care. We knew that connection with people mattered, that what we ate affected us, and that there was a true and simple way to live. Illness and disease were seen as a reflection of the way we were living, and an opportunity to make true change.” That feels a more caring and responsible way to be approaching illness and disease to me, to marry that approach and knowledge with the application of the knowledge of modern medicine I feel would make enormous strides in our handling of the enormous increase in health costs. This would mean that with our ability to recognise our own responsibilities in the cause of much illness, if we were to assist the medical practitioner by altering our daily living to a more responsible way of life, then the outcome and quality of life would be far better. A great beginning for all of us would be to develop that true connection more with others, be more honest with oneself and with others, live a life of far more transparency and responsibility than we do at the moment. This would be a world-changing way for us all to go.
Our seeking of a ‘cure’ both as practitioners and clients has taken our focus away from ourselves. The clients look to the physician hoping, if not expecting to be fixed, patched up so that they do not need to learn anything from the lesson and true healing offered by that the illness about the way they are in life. The physician tends to look to the parts they can fix in the patient, wanting to meet the expectations of the client of providing a cure. However they forget to look at themselves, the role model they are/are not living and are content to just impart knowledge of how to live healthily. For instance, I know as a nurse we are great at caring for others but terrible at looking after ourselves. Telling patients what they ‘should do’ without living it yourself, you become a hypocrite and it falls on deaf ears.
Great article Anne where you have exposed that true care and medicine are not necessarily working together. Medicine has become about fixing – so that we can get on with life and live longer. But there is an irresponsibility in this which in turn reflects the lack of care we are taking.
Thanks Anne, I really enjoyed reading this and how you present things. Makes it so easy to understand.
Being careful does not always mean we are full of care.
I love reading about the root meanings of words related to health. It is bringing back something which was known long ago but has been lost over time. This shows me that although we have advanced medically in skills and knowledge we have lost our foundation in health, the knowing and acceptance that there is a way to live in union with body, mind and soul that creates health.
So if I take the responsibility of caring for myself to the best of my ability, there will be no need for a cure. I love this as it means that I call the shots, I make the choices and therefore get the consequences of those choices and my body is the one that shows all the choices. The body doesn’t try to be or pretend, it just is and shows all the truth.
Anne you made an interesting point about what we eat affecting us which led me to ponder on our origins and the foods we first experimented with. I can imagine people eating things for the first time to see if they were poisonous or not and judging by the way they felt in their bodies. If they felt ill, then that would be something not to eat. These days, if you feel unwell after eating something, it seems that there is something wrong with the person, rather than the food. They are intolerant of the particular food. The food is never seen as the issue, it is the person who has the issue and it is their problem to be fixed or cured not that to care for themselves they should avoid the so called food. If you feel unwell after eating something should it still be called food, or should it be called poison?
There is so much in your article to comment on Anne! Your point of discussion is sorely needed today, “…the dilemma we are faced with in modern medicine today – we have the ability to ‘cure’ all sorts of ills, but with what quality are people living, and what is the level of care with which we are delivering these services?” It seems we have forgotten about quality of life in an age that wants to prolong life at all costs, diminishing the value of care, wellbeing and vitality as long as we can function well.
Having watched a close relative go through the intensities of our local medical system and not knowing if he would live or die, I can honestly say that I just wanted him to be cured, to prolong the life he had because I was not ready to say good bye. The emotional attachment I had to him shows me the investment that is so possible in the medical world to solve our problems without addressing the root cause of our illnesses.
To truly care is to truly cure. True curing is healing that clears the underlying energy behind illness and disease from our bodies. It comes about through our every thought, word and deed. We either harm or heal – no middle ground. So when we live a life of true care we are healing ourselves with every caring choice.
Great questions asked in the article, as I look around at many of the elders in my family the quality of their life seems to be declining, battling with depression, anxiety and ill health, some have had so many joint replacements it seems there is more artificial parts than real. Modern medicine is amazing but our quality of life overall seems to be declining, longer yes but better I am not so sure.
“Most of us say that we care about our friends, family, jobs, cars, possessions, and ourselves. But we have come to associate ‘care’ with trying, being careful, being cautious even. This is not true care. We ‘care’ too much to hurt people’s feelings, to be honest with them, to tell them the truth. And we ‘care’ about ourselves too much to say it as it is, to deal with people’s reactions, to not be liked, to get it ‘wrong’, to say and do what is needed, rather than what people want to hear.”
So it’s pretty obvious that we’re not caring at all but protecting ourselves when what we could be doing with true care is presenting truth with the potential for evolution.
We’ve become so busy with our lives and the need to keep going at any cost which in turn has driven the market place to provide us with the quick fix to get us back up and out there to the complete detriment of our body and our connection with it. No longer are we prepared to allow an illness to take its’ course and give our bodies the rest it is seeking plus we’ve lost sight of the fact that the illness is there asking us to take stock of how it is that we are living.
So loved this Anne, and it’s true – “We ‘care’ too much to hurt people’s feelings, to be honest with them, to tell them the truth. And we ‘care’ about ourselves too much to say it as it is, to deal with people’s reactions, to not be liked, to get it ‘wrong’, to say and do what is needed, rather than what people want to hear.” yet that is not true care, true care is saying the hard stuff as you truly care about that person.
Most of my life I have not cared about me. This is not a confession just how I behaved irresponsibly in reaction to everyone else around me. No one cares in truth and I did not feel it SO I did not act in it. Not until I met Serge Benhayon did I pick up on what was true care again. I knew it, like most of us do realise, but did not choose to live like this because no one else did. Systems are created to not truly take care for you where ever you go .. its no wonder we fall in the gap. Now I do care for me and the way I am feeling .. my life and the world has changed around me and it will continue to change the more I care for me.
Thank you Anne for this caring healing (not cure) blog.
“To care or to cure – can we reunite the two and deliver true health care once again?” I say YES! Although we have separated the two which has delivered the health care system we have today, the only true way forward to deliver true health and true care is to have these 2 work side by side together…
Reading your description of our body when we go into caring mode is exactly my experience – one of contraction in what feels like every part of our body. It’s amazing how our whole body responds to one seemingly small reaction as it feels like a ripple that reaches every little particle. I am now seeing how we experience the science of how our body responds and supports us to change from someone who has lived in total reaction into a way that feels more at one with myself and with everyone else. It’s no wonder that contraction ends up as a dis-ease in our body and deep down we have all known this for aeons. I find great wonderment in exploring and understanding how my body works as part of the greater whole.
So what I get from your article Anne, is that our search for a cure is leading us down a rabbit hole and giving us an inflated sense of irresponsibility. What we need to be looking for is a deeper level of care… I love this.
This article comes from a true Physician who deeply cares about true heath. We all need to look at our health coming from responsibility and true care of how we live and the quality of that life.
I like your analogy of care, and how we usually think of being ‘careful’ like being cautious, controlled etc which doesn’t feel much like care. Care is our most natural way!
Thank you Anne. Looking into the history of anything is fascinating, and especially Medicine. Medicine currently sure has a lot of paradigms, and can treat the physical body very well but is always catching up with the energy that is being lived, which causes all of the ill health in the first place!
“ As we became more scientific, and developed herbs, pills and potions, and skills and techniques – like anaesthetics and surgery – we became taken with the idea that we could fix ailments, cut lumps out, have power over life and death, and generally play God. With this seems to have come the notion that we could fix illness and disease, and then go back to the same way of living that made us ill in the first place.”
This is very true of much of society, we tend to abuse our bodies and there is always a medication or operation that will fix our symptoms so we can continue living a loveless life. I once lived like this and thought I could get away with treating my body with disregard; as I learn to love myself more I naturally nurture my body more and feel when my body is in disharmony, and stop and respond with a deeper level of self-love and care for myself.
It’s a fascinating thought, I hadn’t considered that the way we have changed the word care, caring in our families, as trying, pleasing or as you say “we ‘care’ too much to hurt people’s feelings, to be honest with them, to tell them the truth.” And also this is how we can behave at work or home, “we ‘care’ about ourselves too much to say it as it is, to deal with people’s reactions, to not be liked, to get it ‘wrong’, to say and do what is needed, rather than what people want to hear.” This isn’t true caring, this is hiding behind what we were not prepared to look at and paying lip service to everyone, which does not serve anyone. Great to have it exposed Anne.
You make it so clear Anne, how and why humanity lost touch with the true meaning of the word care. “The original sense of the word was ‘care, concern, responsibility’, particularly in a spiritual sense,” became misinterpreted and then used by organised religions to mean caring for others above all else and yourself, causing much pain, anxiety and ideals as you mention, and created a “care-less” state of being in actuality, which was sometimes then played out in a totally “care-less” attitude in revolt against the burden and restrictions of adhering to the wrong sort of responsibility, that of duty and obedience. I am reminded of the poem by W.H.Davis when he expresses “What is this world if full of care we have no time to stand and stare” — for the life of servitude rather than true service brings has no space in its moments to even connect with ourselves, feelings and bodies.
‘ What is the difference between care and cure? Both words originally came from the same word – isn’t that curious?’ a holistic approach is true medicine, the symptoms are a part of the big picture of our health and wellbeing.
There is a vast difference to being, or living, in presence and connection versus not living this way. I’ve lived both, and the latter feels like my body is a rag doll and i’m constantly in catch up mode. I can honestly say that true care, as you put it Anne, is “a commitment to making our every move – our every thought, word and action – loving and caring, for ourselves and for others”.
I love how you have explored the various aspects of ‘care’ here Anne. From, lotions, potions and pills to true connection with ourselves and others and the quality in which we live from awareness of the body and the responsible choices we can begin to make. There is a link added here to an article that also explores the effects of true connection on our health and wellbeing.
http://www.unimedliving.com/living-medicine/illness-and-disease/the-roseto-effect-a-lesson-on-the-true-cause-of-heart-disease.html
Life is about quality and not about how long we live. In our modern world we have a lot of people alive, in the sense that they are still breathing, but who are not really living life, they are surviving.
I love your suggestions about true care, Anne. I would answer them all without hesitation with YES. Our relationship with our body, allowing ourselves to feel everything and make all our movements loving and caring are key ingredients to live a healthy life.
Anne thank you for taking us back to basics, we have become so far removed from the true meaning of care and cure. The medical profession is geared to finding cures for all our ailments without looking at the quality of how we live, and in many cases taking away the responsibility we have, to look at our own lives and how we live as being the underlying cause …the illness being the end result of not listening to our body. “Could true care be a commitment to making our every move – our every thought, word and action – loving and caring, for ourselves and for others?” What If we all lived with this commitment to care, how different our health service would be, they would be there to support us rather than cure us.
This is a great exploration into the words care and cure. Yes we may think we are being caring when we don’t say something for fear of hurting someone, but if we are holding back what needs to be said we are actually just delaying and causing harm. This isn’t true care at all. And yes, we may think we are truly healing ourselves when we find a ‘cure’ for something, but as you beautifully expose here what quality of life are we offering ourselves if we do not change the things that caused the condition or illness in the first place? Taking care to live in a way that is loving is truly healing for us on so many levels, and it is not about simply getting rid of symptoms.
I like this question Anne as it’s something that I have been working on and has made a huge difference to my life -‘Could true care be developing a relationship with our bodies?’ I would have to answer yes.
It is so true that so many of us see “illness and disease as a nuisance”, something to get fixed as quickly as possible so we can return to the ill way we were living, and then seem surprised when it happens all over again. And then we look outside of ourselves to find the “cure”, a relief from the symptoms, but side step the possibility that we may actually be responsible for the illness in the first place; now that appears to be too much of a quantum leap for most to accept, so we stay in the same old and destructive way we have always lived, until we are stopped – again!
In this modern day of the quick fix we are seldom encouraged to care. In fact many of us live recklessly with an expectation that if our health fails there will be a cure. We have our belonging and entertainment that keep us comfortably distracted, but what is the quality of the life we are living? You pose some great questions here Anne.
In History we studied Medicine Throughout Time, and I can totally attest to what you’ve shared Anne – in Greek times they had Asclepions; sanctuaries of healing, the first hospital style centres where the sick went to be cared for, and a surprisingly large number of patients came out healthier and more vital even in a period when we didn’t have any of the medical technologies we have today. The secret to these Asclepions was that there they focused on three things – resting the body, a healthy diet and exercise; patients were encouraged to eat well, stay active and commit their body to a period of rejuvenation, and this was incredibly effective. Lifestyle-related illness cases are sky-rocketing, so perhaps we could learn something from our Greek past?
It does feel as though we have got to the point of arrogance that we feel we ‘have power over life and death, and generally play God’ rather than let go and accept our responsibility in how we live life. As you say Anne, we now associate care with living life in a way that represses our joy and vitality rather than letting go, knowing that we are all that we need to be and that within we have the wisdom and power when we access the Ageless Wisdom that was once our natural way of being in the world. This for me is very much a work in progress but I can feel that the more I am willing to listen to the wisdom of my body, the greater is my acceptance and understanding of life.
Yes it feels like caring and curing need to be reunited in relationship to people taking responsibility for truly caring for themselves and in this being supported by the medical professions to look at quality of life and what steps can be taken to enhance this. Currently we seem to be in a complicit relationship of irresponsibility where patients hand themselves over to be cured so that they can go back to living how they were before and doctors get caught up in prolonging life without taking time to look at the wider picture.
This is a truly informative article that raises questions that would be so beneficial to be widely publicised in the general public.
Staying alive becomes more important than the quality of this life this days. Old people rot in their ‘homes’, checked out of the present, checked out of community life. ‘To care’ for people is the new big business because so many of us are or will become high-maintenance. We are getting older but not more vital. We need more and more medicine to come through our day – from coffee to painkillers, from ice-cream to alcohol and harder drugs. Who cares? Well, I do. I do not want to take drugs to come through my day, don’t want to check out to not feel the pain around and in me, do not want to feel lost and helpless. So I have to take responsibility and take my power. I have to care. For myself, my lifestyle and my relationships. To care is the new black!
I loved reading this discussion on these two words ‘cure’ and ‘care’. . . very interesting particularly this point you make . . .”. . .we have come to associate ‘care’ with trying, being careful, being cautious even”. . and yes I agree Anne this is not true care, yet it has fooled us into being ‘nice’ people who are living our lives in disregard, harbouring and incubating dis-ease in our bodies from the stress and tension of doing and saying the ‘right’ thing so as to not upset another, upsetting ourselves in the process. We could instead, as you have suggested, simply feel our self in our own body. . . not some idea of how and what that should look like . . . but feel and be with our self in full, in every movement in every moment to the very best of our ability. My guess is that this way of being would deter if not cure most ailments!
Awesome blog Anne and it makes a lot of sense – especially the curing link you’ve brought up at the end here! Curing a condition or unsettlement doesn’t allow for any space, it keeps us rigid for a moment and yet if we are made up of energy and energy can’t stop moving, what exactly are we trying to fix into place? And if a behaviour is repeating so much that it can appear rigid and fixed or something we can’t break free from, is that a truth or just covering up the amount of force required to keep such an illusion maintained?
To care for someone is to tell them the truth, even when that is something that is hard to hear or to say. Someone could for example have cancer that has occurred because of living in disregard but how often do we say to someone, let’s look at making changes to how you live, instead we prefer to go into sympathy and support them in the battle and the misfortune, but is there actually any care in this. If I get sick, I know now that first stop is to look at how I live, to see if I have been looking after myself with true care.
Thank you, Anne, this is a pertinent question for every medical professional to responsibly consider, and for every single one of us to reflect on in terms of the level of responsibility we are willing to take for our own health and wellbeing. If we truly do care and live a life deepening our connection to ourselves and others, it is natural to treat our bodies in a loving way.
Anne I’ve really enjoyed reading your post, it raises some great points and I had no idea where the origin of these words came from. We simply use them every day without appreciating their true meaning. I had no idea of the depth that Care actually meant but completely agree with your posed position. It’s also interesting to consider cure alone as we have instead of allowing us to consider quality as well. Do we want to be “cured” like a piece of meat or live a full quality of life?
We seem to have come a long way from the true meanings of cure and care. What i have noticed is that it is the pain that people don’t want. We would do anything not to feel the pain. The doctors must have something to stop the pain. In my experience the less we take responsibility for ourselves the more pain we have. The more we choose comfort and deny what is really going on for us the more the body is numbed into a false sense of security, we have a seeming short respite, a relief but the cause of the pain may linger longer, under the surface waiting to pop up when the analgesic wears off or we find ourselves in a similar situation to that that is causing our reaction.
It is interesting to look at how the meaning of words has changed over time and how in many cases the true essence of what was originally intended to be expressed has been lost. I remember looking up the origins of the term ‘common sense’ some time ago and finding that at one time it related to a very definite feeling – as we might describe a sixth sense – that is in everyone. Today it has become much more cerebral rather than feeling based. To me, with these more mental interpretations of words I feel we have disconnected from our ability to feel what is and isn’t true and have lost something very important in the process. We are sensory beings and our senses do not lie to us but simply offer us feedback. Perhaps we have lost our connection to this offering of truth that is innate in our bodies.
I love your way of describing irresponsibility: us playing God, fixing illness and disease, and then go back to the same way of living that made us ill in the first place. Putting it in the hands of doctors to undo the effects of our unloving choices, without learning that every choice has consequences and that our body never lies and always communicates the truth.
Anne as you have shown the word ‘care’ has lost its true meaning and what you share brings back the essence of care and its foundation in truly loving connection with self and others. My observations of the social care providers is that they have forgotten how to truly care and care, a much used term, has become detached from human understanding and kindness. In the UK we have ‘standards of care.’ and countless care standards and quality agencies and yet the service offered to children, older people, the disabled is rarely truly caring and abuse is evident and accepted. Humanity has become so insensitive and detached, it now sets and normalises care quality standards at basic not highest level. People living in residential homes are routinely abused because the level of care received lacks love and true care but meets ‘quality standards’. People are not seen or responded to as individual and whole beings but as ‘residents’ or ‘dementia patients.’ Many residential care homes are ‘holding grounds’ rather than true loving home environments where each person is supported, nurtured and loved.
How wise, pure and connected to our soul we were back in time: “In ancient times, medicine offered true care. We knew that connection with people mattered, that what we ate affected us, and that there was a true and simple way to live. Illness and disease were seen as a reflection of the way we were living, and an opportunity to make true change.” Simple and true. Universal Medicine reminds us of these pearls of wisdom that influence our health and well-being deeply.
Anne, I’d like to share 2 things. The first one is the fact that I feel impressed by the clarity and authority in which you’re sharing your Wisdom. That stopped me in my tracks and made me ponder on the article. Secondly the word QUALITY stood out for me. Reading your article made me wonder (without having the answer) why we’ve allowed a more empty version of life taking over? Why have we accepted a lesser version of life than we used to have in the past? To me connection to people is the most valuable in life. And according to many people I meet, this is for everyone? So what is it that we don’t express that? And in doing so, treat each other from a ‘doing’ rather than Truly meeting each other? And if WE allowed it, WE are to re-claim what we know inside out, that we are worth of True Care and True Cure. Where meeting each other is the True Medicine.
Absolutely beautiful blog Anne. As you have pointed out our version of care is very different from true care. We have bastardised the word and changed the meaning thus rendering naught the true benefits and support that true care offers. There is much to ponder on and reflect upon within that which you have written. Thank you.
Thank you Anne, you have given me a whole new appreciation of the word ‘cure’ and what we are really doing when we attempt to fix an illness or disease without addressing the root cause and our habitual behaviours that underpin them. There was a time in my life when my daily choices were definitely curing me, I felt completely depressed and lifeless. Today it’s a different story, I feel vital, joyful and well. Learning to observe and alter my daily choices has shifted my focus from curing to caring, properly caring about what I eat, when I sleep and the quality of my inner and outer relationships. When we focus on care in the real and proper sense, we inflate our lives again with Love, a quality that restores a delicious warmth and richness that makes our lives worthwhile, however long or short they may be.
Thank you Anne, very clear explanation of where we have gone to with how our care for ourselves and how we treat the body in the medical system. It is time we claim quality of living back into our lives and that means we need to take responsibility for the way we use our bodies and deal with life. It is time to have a close look to our medical system as it has become an exhausted and overused system. So it is time for a true answer on the question you leave us with: To care or to cure – can we reunite the two and deliver true health care once again?
“Could true care be developing a relationship with our bodies?” I love this question Anne. For so many years I inhabited my body merely as a vehicle to get through my day – no real relationship. As I have developed a relationship with it over the years, thanks to Universal Medicine, I know that I receive messages from it constantly. It is up to me to be still enough to receive those messages and then choose to act on them by making different lifestyle choices. Responsibility.
Anne, great article, I love the simplicity of what you share here, ‘Could true care be as simple as feeling yourself in your body – from the top of your head to the tips of your fingers and the ends of your toes, and being aware of your whole body as you move, in everything that you do?’ This is gorgeous, I know that when I’m feeling my body and moving it feels very natural and freeing, it feels great to not be in my head thinking about something else, but instead to be present and enjoying my movements.
“….the notion that we could fix illness and disease, and then go back to the same way of living that made us ill in the first place.” It does seem so strange that so many people want to ‘get back to normal’ – when it is their ‘normal’ that predisposed them to to the dis-ease in the first place. As creatures of habit we don’t like change. Yet so many Universal Medicine students, who have chosen to make lifestyle changes, are going against the norm of society – looking and feeling younger and fitter as the years go by.
‘Could true care be a commitment to making our every move – our every thought, word and action – loving and caring, for ourselves and for others?’ Truth pure and simple Anne. If we kept it as simple as this, the world would be in a very different place.
Great insight Anne. Taking true care of ourselves in the choices we make in the way we live influences how we care for others and for the world around us.
I can feel a lovely sense of the truth of the term ‘care-full’ emanating from your words here Anne Malatt. This relates to it as a way of being, a livingness that we embody, not just an attitude that we take in life. To be care-full feels like being fully present in all that we do, feeling our connection with everyone and everything and all honouring a deep sense of preciousness we hold each other in. Being care-full feels like a very beautiful way to live.
Knowing how powerful our choice is to truly care for our bodies and treat them as you would want another to treat them is an eye opening reality that I have been stunned to know, the difference I feel within myself since I have made the time and effort to care and maintain my body and its needs has turned my life around and all my relationships, and this I can feel is just the beginning.
‘Could true care be developing a relationship with our bodies?’ – Absolutely to me this is true care, if we are developing a relationship with our bodies we develop a deeper relationship with not only what we need but everyone and thing around us. This is extraordinarily simple and takes away the complication in life.
I wonder if we have moved away from the true essence of responsibility by creating groups of ‘responsible’ people. We have doctors to look after our health, social workers to see to our vulnerable and elderly, police to deal with crime…but have we taken this to mean we do not have any responsibility in these areas? Isn’t the true essence of responsibility collaborative, so we work with our doctors, social workers and police in all these areas rather than expect them to handle it all? We know this isn’t working and that these professionals are overwhelmed by their caseloads. Perhaps we need to look again at our perception of ‘who’s responsible’ and see what else we can do rather than point fingers of blame at others.
A great presentation of how we have separated words from their true meaning to fit them into a lifestyle that does not care, but at the same time resists to live with the consequences of not caring. We just focus on the cure, the fix, the replacement, the single organ, the external health factor, etc. But we cannot truly cure or better said heal without caring first.
This is a great article Anne, something that I find very interesting is how the more we make the changes we feel are needed on a day-to-day basis the more we are able to changes our lives and reflect another way to live.
The comfort seeking spirit finds all ways to separate human life from truth and so we seek to cure where we don’t care.
Anne, what a fascinating insight into the origins of the words care and cure. We have most definitely changed their meaning to suit our current way of living. For me I have found that the quality I am and live with is one of the most important things, without it I am miserable, things don’t work, I get frustrated etc..
I appreciate Anne that you include medicos in the irresponsibility loop. As one yourself you have an industry knowledge that gives credence to your comments. If you are noticing something needs to change from within, then that is worth sitting up and taking notice of. We are all needing to embrace responsibility!
The medical fraternity has become the pit crew to keep our bodies running. At the same time, we are using taxidermy methods to preserve our looks and be dried flowers that have long lost their scent. You have an important point Anne that we need to go back to the truth of the meaning of caring and curing for ourselves by the way that we live.
‘Now, we see illness and disease as a nuisance, an inconvenience, to be fixed, gotten rid of, cured, so we can get back to doing what we were doing before.’
Yes – to paraphrase a well-known disclaimer it seems to be as case of “All cure, no responsibility”.
‘With this (the advent of scientific cure) seems to have come the notion that we could fix illness and disease, and then go back to the same way of living that made us ill in the first place…’
When spelt out so clearly, we can see what an erroneous way of thinking is represented here. What sense does this make? None, whatsoever, yet in our irresponsibility we refuse to see it.
It seems care has become separated from cure in more ways than one. True care is the cure – we have simply lost the way.
The choices that we make and how we live is our best dose of good medicine. This type of medicine requires us to be responsible for how we treat ourselves and others. Through Universal Medicine, I have come to understand that illness and disease is my body’s way of showing me that there has been disharmony in the way I have been living and offers me an opportunity to make different choices.
‘Looking to fix and cure may prolong our lives, but it does not necessarily enhance the quality of them.’ If we are living longer and longer, but sicker and sicker (as statistics on disease and illness rates alarmingly show) what is the point of this longevity? How are we currently living our lives and what does this say about the state that humanity has now got to? ‘But bringing that quality brings a depth and richness to life, no matter how long and short it is, and even if we are confronted with illness and disease.’ I for one would much rather have a richness to life even if it meant cutting this life short than to live out my days feeling flat, ill and drugged up!
A beautiful blog Anne, that shows us that we have walked away quite a distance from the truth that we are. Care and cure, what do these words truly stand for and how do we use them in our nowadays way of living? Are we willing to see that in that we have also bastardised the meaning of words in order to justify or support our ill way of being, miles away from who we truly are. We have to become honest with ourselves and stop living this irresponsibility and reclaim back the power that lives in us, the power of love and with that reclaim also the true meaning of words that we are using and with that take true care for ourselves and others and heal but not cure the ailments we have because of us choosing for that lesser way of living.
‘We ‘care’ too much to hurt people’s feelings, to be honest with them, to tell them the truth. And we ‘care’ about ourselves too much to say it as it is, to deal with people’s reactions, to not be liked, to get it ‘wrong’, to say and do what is needed, rather than what people want to hear’. I agree. I have very much lived life this way. I have not wanted to hurt the feelings of others so have stayed quiet, nor have I wanted to be at the butt end of a reaction, so I have stayed quiet. This is not ‘care’ but a withdrawal from what is true and a shrinking into oneself and a shirking of responsibility. When truth is a constant terminal the denial of this, for whatever reason, is harmful to everyone – no one gets it and we keep spinning in the mire of our own making.
“Now, we see illness and disease as a nuisance, an inconvenience, to be fixed, gotten rid of, cured, so we can get back to doing what we were doing before”. Anne when you express this in relation to how we used to live in connection, with understanding of what disease and illness offered us, it feels that we have become very backwards whilst all the while ignorantly and arrogantly feeling like we are very advanced! To return to this understanding by taking responsibility for the choices we have made that have made our bodies sick feels like true evolution.
This is a great line Anne “And while we are busy in our heads, we are not at ease in our bodies.” and so very true.
Anne I love how you shared that in ancient times there was not complication in the link between care and cure. There was a societal knowing in regards to the responsibility of themselves through self care “Illness and disease was a reflection of how we were living’.
Such a superb article Anne. I love that you have exposed the word cure and the desire we have to use it in an attempt to preserve our bodies at the expense of quality…. You don’t have to look far to see we are indeed suffering from this, coupled with the lack of care in the process… together however, the healing capabilities would be truly remarkable.
‘Could true care be a willingness to feel what is there to be felt, and to honour our feelings, to be aware of what is truly going on within and around us?’ Anne I have found this to be a key component in changing the quality of my life and health. I have come to realise how much energy I would commit to not feeling the disharmony around me, thus leading to patterns of behaviour to help me disconnect from feeling – such as eating sweet and heavy comfort food, alcohol, caffeine and stimulating my mind. There are now more refined versions of the above that can come into play, so for me self-care includes activities that deepen my connection to my body so that anything that takes me out becomes far more obvious. When I lose this connection a physical condition can quickly arise to wake me up, and I have come to appreciate these wake-up calls rather than seeing them as a nuisance.
True care is speaking truth to the root, of the root, and not speaking to that which covers the root in any disguise to stop growth. Hence true care is growth, expansion, evolution. It is love.
“Do we want a life of richness, of quality, irrespective of the length of it, or do we want to prolong life at all costs?” – expressions many of us know like: ‘quality over quantity’, or ‘less is more’, are always spoken with such benefit, though it seems different or not so well applied when it comes to our health where duration/length, time or years surpasses the quality aspect into more ‘existence’, and not ‘true living’ that comes from true care as you share Anne.
Anne this is a great article that gives me pause to ponder. I certainly spent many years of my life seeking a fix-it magic pill/procedure cure, be it medical or herbal. I recall a few instances when I’ve been called to account but it’s not been to my liking. Once a family doctor told me to get more exercise and my woes (teenage angst & depression) would improve. He certainly lived the benefits of physical activity but clearly the message was not delivered with love. A dentist called me to account for my dental caries, telling me how hard it is to break down the enamel of my teeth. I was deeply held in the belief that I had drawn the short straw from the family genetic pool and spent a childhood where every trip to the dentist meant dental work, so his words fell on deaf ears because I’d already given up. However, one session with Serge Benhayon and the seeds of taking self-responsibility for the quality of my life were sown, and have since blossomed, because he models true self-care and without a word the message is felt. He and other practitioners have since called me to account at times when I slip into the old irresponsible ways, but it is delivered with loving wisdom so, uncomfortable as the truth may be, I can accept it and then, gradually, bring deeper care into my life.
Thank you Anne, another brilliant article exposing how the true sense we have of the words “cure” and “care” – based on their original meaning – is so very far removed from the reality of how they are applied in our day to day lives. Much to ponder on…
Thank you Anne for such a thoughtful exploration of the change of the word caring and curing. It seems that we become fascinated with our ability to provide a quick solution to an ailment or problem. Proud that we can relieve symptoms and yet do not want to look deeper and address how we have created the issue in the way that we lived in disharmony.
It seems we want a ‘cure’ to relieve us of the pain caused by the myriads of love-less choices we have made throughout our lives. That is, as you have presented Anne, we do not want to take responsibility for the lack of love that we have lived that has caused and is causing us so much pain. But – the easiest way to ‘solve the problem’ of not living the love that we are, is to make the choice to live it. No rocket science there! And therein our resistance to this is unveiled…
Imagine if every doctor, nurse or medical profession gave a ‘pill’ of advice to self love – perhaps simple and practical examples. Some will say yes, others no. But it must start somewhere. I might add that those who do self love can be the inspiration for others to do the same. Such is our responsibility to be all that we are in everything we do.
Brilliant ponderings Anne. Without true care there can be no true cure. A lifeless preservation is far surpassed by a care-filled life that is lived to the core. Thus, it is not how long a life we live, but how much of it we are willing to live in the amount of time we are given to live it.
I can feel your deep care for the medical industry and for humanity Anne. To truly care is to allow all that we can feel to be felt to the depth of devastation of how the world currently is in, observing and not taking it on, and naturally in honoring of what is felt, truth cannot be held back without any expectation of how it is received. And it is in deeply caring for ourselves in how we feel each and every moment that builds the movement of how and in what quality truth is expressed out as. The awareness with our body and with expression are forever impacting each other. We are all deepening in our expression and with each expression from care, we build and further build a stronger and clearer foundation of truth—isn’t this true medicine and true cure (healing)?
There is so much that is covered in your article Anne that is worthy of deep consideration. We can only truly offer another that which we are living and reflecting ourselves. We have a responsibility to love and care for ourselves deeply. What is the value of holding on to life if there is no true quality?
Curing a disease or removing symptoms may offer relief temporarily however if we are not addressing the underlying ill energy or issues that created the disharmony we do not experience a complete or true healing.
The genuine care is felt in your writing Anne, thank you. I totally agree that the richness of our lives is born from the quality that is lived. Curing an aliment or disease does not necessarily offer a true healing, that is the part we must play.
Thank you, Anne. Very interesting to read the examples of how we live when we become ‘careful’. There’s this feeling of shrinking that goes with them, it almost feels like a curse to be told to ‘be careful’. When there’s no love, to care becomes just guardedness, protection – but when there’s love, ‘to care’ offers opportunity to take things into consideration in a wider and more detailed spectrum than we would normally do.
I choose the first one, ‘…a life of richness, of quality, irrespective of the length of it…’, sometimes it doesn’t quite look like it but my cells are saying yes. Even the word ‘cure’ for me brings up connotations of removing something, from the hands of someone else or making the choice to ourselves. I find it interesting how much we can use the word ‘care’ to our liking in regards to what situation we are in. It is powerful to be reconnected to the true meaning of words so that we can feel and consider how we use them.
Thanks Anne for explaining the meanings behind ‘care’ and ‘cure’. Your blog has certainly highlighted just how far away we have gotten from their original meanings. Many people would say that they ‘care’ deeply about things but usually they are referring to things outside of themselves. As you have said, people nowadays seem to associate ‘cure’ with getting rid of symptoms and getting back to ‘normal’ life. In both cases, people may see themselves as ‘good’ people but have a very limited concept of self care and responsibility for true health. It’s great that you are raising this area for others to discuss because the more we realise how lost we have actually become in regards to health, the sooner we can take steps to remedy (pun intended!) the situation.
Learning to understand illness and symptoms as a divine communication from my body has been life changing for me. No longer do I seek to be ‘perfect’ or measure myself as such because I am free of illness; nor do I see illness as shameful, but rather I read what it is I am needing to embrace or let go of. This is a very empowering and as you say Anne, a very rich way to live.
Dear Anne
I love your exploration of the word care: allowing ourselves to feel our bodies and what is really going on there. It is so very simple and yet we so frequently fall for the delights of our senses or the fascinations of what is out there all around us. In my experience, if I do not choose presence in my body, then with me not there, that space is filled with thoughts that will take me out even further. It is great to see this with clarity for then we know how important it is to keep choosing to feel, connect and be aware.
Anne, what an eye opener, I never knew care and cure had the same root and how much our change of those words reflects how we now act and expect in life with illness and our engagement with medicine. There is so much here to understand but this sentence popped out loud and clear: ‘Could true care be a commitment to making our every move – our every thought, word and action – loving and caring, for ourselves and for others?’ What an amazing question, one which asks how we live and do we live with our true quality?
‘The Latin noun ‘cura’, meaning ‘care’, became the verb ‘curare’, meaning ‘take care of’ and then the Old French ‘curer’, meaning ‘cure’ – is it possible we have lost the true ‘care’ out of the way we live and medicine in our lives? Have we made ‘to cure’ our way at all costs? The two words are connected and if this is to be lived in our lives in the way we love ourselves and the way the traditional Medical model is to hold us in our treatments, then we need to re-connect to their true meaning.
Anne, this is brilliant. A very insightful read, there was so much gold in your article I can not list them all. But for now one of my favorite lines was;
“But ‘cure’ can also apply to meat and skins, whereby we render them ‘fixed’ in such a way that we preserve them, so they do not rot, and can be used for longer. They may last longer, but this process takes the life out of them. We can apply this to the trajectory of our lives.” We really need to look at why we so easily accept quantity of life over quality. Thank you for caring enough to say what is needed.
Anne I love what you have written here, it really reflects where things go awry within the health industry – I would love to see you presenting this message in front of a huge medical forum. I would also love to read this in every large newspaper around the country as well – and in schools – the responsibility aspect is so fundamental. Especially as it might be working against the vested interests of big pharmaceutical industries who make a lot of money out of the current model and are unlikely to support Medical University faculties to spread this message.
True care for ourself is definitely what is needed in our society, we choose to live life careless as we don’t want to take the responsibility for our life, which is based on cycles so many don’t want to see, but they are definitely there. So when we don’t choose care we will be confronted by it again and again, it is all on our choices.
Thank you Anne, I would like to also ask why we’ve chosen to separate the two? Why have we chosen irresponsibility over Responsibility? And why have we chosen to ‘take care of others’ is more important than taking care of ourselves first? What are we missing out on? And why is it so difficult to be honest about the fact that we are all missing ourselves deeply so, every moment that we choose to not feel ourselves deep within our body? How different would life be if we would care and cure each other with warmth, truth and honesty, in the knowing that we all are destined to return to the Loving being that we are. And that at times our bodies need illness and disease in order to support us in this process? Then we would have a common ground to stand on and to live from. Worth pondering, Care and Cure re-uniting.
Wonderful Anne how you have dissected these two words and explored how they actually ‘play out’ in our lives. Your sharing here has opened up much to ponder, both personally and within the medical system that is constantly looking for cures, often without the ‘care’ of the cost to patients. I have seen this for decades.
I agree, Bernadette. It got me thinking that the focus is on the wrong area. Not only should we working to help bandage, stitch up and mend the injured, we should also change our focus in terms of what is causing the disease in people’s bodies.
I like how you describe that we once knew that everything we did had an influence on us and that basically living was medicine to us, only then to become lax with all this wisdom, thinking we could outsmart the body and do whatever we like and then medicating us with more and more medical inventions. It simply shows that we do know and can return to true care and medicine quite easily.
“In ancient times, medicine offered true care. We knew that connection with people mattered, that what we ate affected us, and that there was a true and simple way to live. Illness and disease were seen as a reflection of the way we were living, and an opportunity to make true change.” We have lost much true understanding of the meaning of so many words over the centuries resulting in the position humanity now finds itself where we see ourselves relying on the modern medical system to be able to fix all our ailments for us. We think that we can go on living in a completely irresponsible way, eat whatever appeals to our taste buds, eat as much as we like when we are eating in great excess of what the body needs, numb ourselves with alcohol and drugs in great excess, party all night, become workaholics, constantly trying to solve other people’s problems, generally run ourselves into exhaustion, whatever appeals, and then expect someone else to fix us when the body can no longer take what we are foisting upon it. A great article here, Anne, much food for thought for all of us, thank you. It is time for us all to take true responsibility for the way we are living our lives.
“Could true care be as simple as feeling yourself in your body – from the top of your head to the tips of your fingers and the ends of your toes, and being aware of your whole body as you move, in everything that you do?” Thank you Anne for this unraveling of what true care is.
Thank you Anne – a great article bringing awareness to quick fixes with illness and disease or addressing the actual causes which required lifestyle changes. This sentence resonates deeply within my body on feeling the quality you speak of – round rich and full when it is the quality of our living way.
“We live life in cycles. These can be short and sweet (or not) or long but drawn out and flat, or long and round, rich and full, depending on the quality we bring to them, the quality of our living way”.
Anne, thank you.
It seems that now that the main belief around illness and disease is that it happens to us and that how life is lived is not a factor. To turn this around and return to everyone the power of self responsibility is so needed, one person at a time. Personally I would love a Doctor that says hey we can prescribe this for a short while to support your body, whilst you introduce self care to your life. And in so doing, begin to support your body so it may no longer need this drug. Such power is at our finger tips.
Your opening lines say much Anne – ‘ What is the difference between care and cure? Both words originally came from the same word – isn’t that curious?’
True medicine cares for the whole – not just the mechanics of the body or surface symptoms – and inspires health-care that brings true quality to life.
A very needed distinction in our modern day lingo. We often do not give much care to words these days and what they truly mean but as this blog highlights, it is super important to do so, as words we often think are similar are in truth very very different when looked at closely under the microscope. Could this be because the use of the true meaning of words could ask us to be more responsible and loving?
Anne, this make so much sense and I am just sitting here going – yes, yes, yes!
We are so fixated on prolonging life that many in the medical fraternity (doctors and nurses) are too scared to stop treating and to actually accept that death is the most loving thing to do. It all comes back to our own knowing of death and what it means. and how we feel about ourselves and our understanding of life cycles (or not). This knowing or lack of it affects our practice and decisions around caring and curing.
Caring for ourselves from moment to moment is the true cure to our ailments we have long looked for under rocks, on top of mountains, in potions and lotions and big thick books. Amazing Anne, that the way forward was here all the time in the way we are with others and ourselves.
Awesome blog Anne, it seems we have lost the true meaning of ‘care’ and ‘cure’. Your blog explains it brilliantly and so by combining the true meaning of the two and apply them with quality to our lives, I feel this will lead to incredible changes to our state of health and way of life.
What an incredible blog Anne. Every time I read about the origin of a word I get the sense that the way these words are used and bastardised reflects the truth of how we live. The examples you provide here illustrate this in a simple and profound way.
I have been reading some posts on a popular social media site focussing on doctors treating cancer and there is a great drive to raise millions to ‘find a cure’ yet every post I read feels empty and evil.
Your blog helps me understand why I feel this way. The obsession with a ‘cure’ exposes the amount of identification many in the medical industry have with the picture they they can be the hero in shining armour arriving with the cure. There is a great deal of irresponsibility evident with both patients and practitioners in search of the quick fix. I can completely understand how distressing it is to be seriously ill, however I have also felt and observed that illness and disease is a great blessing when we choose to see how our choices created it.
Hello Anne and I am interested to read your opinion here. This I must say I wasn’t aware of, “In ancient times, medicine offered true care.” You are saying that we all have an equal responsibility in the way modern medicine is offered which makes sense, “That is the dilemma we are faced with in modern medicine today – we have the ability to ‘cure’ all sorts of ills, but with what quality are people living, and what is the level of care with which we are delivering these services?”
How fascinating to read that we have actually switched the true meaning of the word care around. So now how we approach caring is something that cause tension in our bodies so we get it all right, rather than the openness for allowing what is there to be felt, understood and accepted and supported from an inner knowing and not a doing.