On Injury , Healing and Self

"Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears. ".
- Marcus Aurelius

A recent study in biomedicine bears this to be a true statement.

On a study fifty middle aged rural white men who had suffered traumatic spinal and brain injuries - they were asked to give the details of their physical strength, sexual performance, independence and successful career achievement.

It was deduced that there was a negative effect on the recovery when there was an increased masculinity and/or relationship control over females - and also that these men less happy in their life.

However, men who had concentrated on their career, success, power and competition - viz. manliness - showed markedly better recovery after hospitalization.

Dr. Glenn Good concludes in the study - masculine tendencies to aid in recovery but argues to dissuade patients from exerting control over women.

So, the moral of the story is. If you have a life to live, go live it as strong as you can. And don't worry about what she's up to all the time - she can take care of herself, or you haven't married the right person to begin with. Or you aren't with the right person - either.

Science can more easily validate meditations by someone such as Marcus Aurelius - rather than someone like Albert Camus, simply because he made definite statements for which truth can be ascertained. For example, Camus writes :

Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil.

This is a true statement, however, to measure virtue in terms of distance of separation from reality is much more difficult than to measure the virtue of manliness in terms of distance of separation from a state of physical or neurological degeneration.

Both Camus and Aurelius acknowledge a higher presence in the world - Aurelius saying famously 'the gods rule the world' , where Camus echoed 'I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is. '

"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment "