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What's the Meaning of Life?
Physician and author Bernie Siegel remains undaunted by the big questions
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Business New Haven
12/9/2002
By: BNH
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Bernard S. Siegel, M.D. of Woodbridge was trained as a pediatric and general surgeon. But he has made his mark in life seeing patients as a whole, not parts. In 1978 he founded Exceptional Cancer Patients (ECaP), which incorporates patients' dreams, drawings and images into individual and group therapy. His 1986 bestseller Love, Medicine & Miracles (followed by Peace, Love & Healing, Prescriptions for Living and How To Live Between Office Visits) marked a redirection of his career toward humanizing medical education and raising awareness within the medical community of the mind-body connection and its healing potential. His latest book, Help Me To Heal, will be published next year.
Is American medicine gradually becoming more wholistic, or less?
It's better than it was, but still an enormous disappointment to me in how slow it has [happened]. It's still a minority of American medical schools that deal with wholistic or integrative issues - from spirituality to herbal remedies and other non-prescription items. [American medicine is still] oriented toward treating afflictions and diagnosis and not the experience of the person. So while the technology advances, the care does not. When you sit in support groups as I do, and hear what doctors are like, you want to give them a whack in the head sometimes. They're not evil people, but their lack of training leads them to be that way.
Life expectancy of Americans has increased dramatically in a very brief span of human history. What are some of the spiritual issues associated with people living long past the ends of their careers and finding a new purpose to their lives?
If children aren't loved they are much more likely to be self-destructive - overweight, smoking, poor diet, etc. So parenting is a very significant public-health issue for the future. As families grow up and spread out around the world, instead of around the neighborhood, you don't get that kind of support and love you got just a generation or so ago. In terms of living to an old age, that's where it becomes very significant, because living to an old age doesn't mean you're not capable of taking care of yourself. We want to help people to grow up, live, be healthy and function. What I see in the 90- and 100-year-olds who are, is that they're still serving the world. They're not 'working' in the traditional definition of work, but they're enjoying contributing to the world. That could include working at McDonald's, having fun meeting people. They're maintaining meaning in their lives.
After September 11, Americans seemed to take a collective pause to refocus on core values like family, love, health. Do you think that spirit will endure?
I'm disappointed in the human race, period. Look how we treat each other, based on our differences. I'm always showing a slide of [human] insides and asking, 'Tell me what race/religion/sex/nationality it's a picture of?' We're all the same inside. Disasters remind us of our mortality. But until you truly accept your mortality and look at these spiritual issues - Why are we really here? What is the point of being alive? - and sense that we're all in this together, I'm not sure it will ever be solved.
You predicted that the effect of consciousness on man and matter would become an established scientific fact before long. Are we closer to that day than before?
Yeah. There are some wonderful books that came out this summer; one is called The Field by Lynne McTaggart, which discusses the collective nature of consciousness, and how it affects us all. Another is The Psychobiology of Gene Expression by Ernest Rossi. The intention of the doctor affects the patient. Your practices, behaviors and attitudes affect your body. You make genetic changes happen. So eventually we will see how thoughts, consciousness are part of science. You can't separate them.
Overall, many have observed that Americans seem to be working harder and harder just to stay even financially. What are some ways professional people can avoid or stop the hamster-on-a-treadmill syndrome?
If their lord is their money, then people are working for the wrong lord. If you're here to serve people, then it's not a matter of how big is your car, how big is your house, how much can you accumulate. I see this with people when they get a life-threatening illness, and then they realize, 'You know, I could have a smaller house; I don't need this and that' - and suddenly it's okay, and they're living. It's just like the song says: You can't take it with you.
Another example: [A person] wins the lottery. You look him up five years later and ask, 'How are you feeling?' Ninety-five percent [of respondents] in one study said it ruined their lives. They start fighting with the family, with the kids, and everyone's bitter and resentful toward one another. If money becomes the most important thing in your life, then you're living the wrong life.
Speaking of financial well-being, has the revolution in so-called managed care made physicians generally care more about money and less about medicine?
I don't think it's physicians so much. Managed-care organizations are making it a money issue. If you go back a generation, yes, doctors needed to get paid for what they did. When I practiced [surgery], you operated on somebody, and if they paid you or didn't pay you, fine. If I was filling out an insurance form, I sent it in and got paid by the [insurance] company. Now people are looking over your shoulder [asking], 'What did you prescribe?' 'What drug?' 'Oh - we don't cover that one,' 'Don't do that operation'...that's not oriented toward caring for people.
You chose a particularly stressful career for yourself. When did you become aware of the need for balance in your own life?
It was through my own unhappiness as a doctor, and no one helping me. The question that comes up but is never asked of doctors is, Why would you want to be God? The correct answer is to understand why we have a world like this - with disease, with suffering, with problems. You struggle with these things as a doctor watching lovely people go through hell. But they never talk that over with you [during physician training]. How I turned my life around was [through] my patient who said, 'You want to help me? Teach me how to live between office visits.' So then it's not just about disease, but about helping someone to live. And it changes everything.
Do you have a new book in the pipeline?
I've got a lot of them. One is about a house rat that we had named Smudge, who taught me a lot; that's going to be a children's book. The other, which will be out shortly, is Help Me To Heal, which is about helping people when they encounter an illness or hospitalization - how you behave, how you put together a healing 'team,' all the behavior patterns and things that help with what I call 'survival behavior.'
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