Here we are again, at that MOST AMERICAN of all our holidays—Superbowl Sunday.
I have a personal axe to grind with this day, as I am a Capricorn, with a January 17th birthday. I suffered quietly from that common indignity of December/ January babies, receiving combination Christmas/birthday presents as a child. But it was Superbowl Sunday that I came to loathe. My father’s already limited emotional presence would withdraw over the month of January, getting displaced deeper and deeper into a television set.
Deeply scarred by the silliness of being jealous of a football game, all of my life I have chosen men who were not avid sports fans. But Superbowl Sunday day has gotten bigger and bigger over the past twenty years, becoming more and more difficult to ignore. When the New England patriots played in 2002, I’ll admit to a magical bonding moment with my then thirteen-year-old son. We were at a hotel for a weekend conference, and I kept the hotel room for an extra night, as a treat to him (we have no television at home). I caught up on blessed sleep while he watched the game, and I told him to wake me up, “if anything interesting happened”. So I got to see that amazing field goal of Adam Vinatieri’s that won the team the game.
It was a miracle we needed as a country, “post 9/11” with the New England Patriots taking the full hit of our national dreams for a victory…Somewhere… ANYWHERE.
Now, six years later, the nation’s former Cinderella team is behaving like a bunch of thugs. I am not surprised. With so much money involved, why shouldn’t they be doing everything within their power to win? That is the American Way, isn’t it?
And if you can’t win legally, WIN ANYWAY. That is what I have learned, watching the Bush administration and corporate consolidation of power both before and since 9/11.
This Sunday, millions of Americans will stuff themselves with junk food (better than Thanksgiving), work themselves into alcoholic frenzy (better than New Year’s Eve), bet on the game and on the Biggest and Brightest Commercials (better than casino gambling and the Academy Awards, combined), and beat up their women.
Superbowl Sunday is the day when more women get battered than any other day of the year.
I am drawn to a gentler, kinder community venture this Sunday in the form of a concert in honor of Black History month at Southern Vermont College, in Bennington (see www.svc.edu).
Next rant: “Super Tuesday”
Filed under: feral M.D. blogs | Tags: consumer health advocacy, holistic health, spirituality
Hello, everyone. I call myself a feral physician, because “feral” is a term used to describe a domesticated animal that has escaped and returned to the wild, like a feral cat.
I am a physician who was once domesticated, but now I have returned to the wild. I practiced as a conventional family physician for about twenty years, from 1985 to 2005. That domesticated lifestyle was a seriously out of balance trap for me, and I am happy to be wild, again.
I used to be a doctor. Now I am a healer, and an artist.
I will be writing blog entries two or three times a week, which I hope will give readers a chance to examine where in their lives they too, might want to consider a Return to Their Wilder Selves.
I turned fifty-one on the seventeenth of January. Most people who look at me are surprised when they hear my age. Often they go on (and on, and on…) about how “I don’t look fifty”. I like to paraphrase Gloria Steinem’s quip of a response:
“This is what fifty OUGHT to look like.”
One reason that I look younger than my stated age might have to do with having been a doctor. I took an online quiz www.realage.com, and scored 7 years younger than my actual physical age. I know why some of the lifestyle issues and behaviors are important to a younger appearance and a longer lifespan; that website is a good place to begin examining how your behaviors and lifestyle affects the prognosis of living to a ripe old age.
I won’t be talking much about the issues presented in the real age test in my blogs.
There are some really great websites on the internet that give medical and health information that would be useful to readers interested in holistic health; www.mercola.com is one, www.lef.org (site for a great magazine called Life Extension), and www.holisticmedcine.org is a third.
I won’t be talking much about the medical issues presented at those websites, either.
I believe that we human beings living out our lives in the Western world (particularly the United States of America) are FIGHTING FOR OUR LIVES in an extremely toxic environment. I don’t mean air pollution, carcinogens, and heavy metals. I mean spiritual and emotional toxicity.
Being a doctor gave me the factual information to know what to eat, and how much to exercise to stay looking young and healthy. But being a doctor also locked me into a lifestyle that almost killed me. Then, after a total breakdown and a miraculous survival, the very system that tried to kill me insisted on “helping” me in my recovery. All I had to do to re-establishing myself as a practicing physician was to crawl back into the box from which I had escaped.
But I have said that I am feral, now. Feral animals tend to be somewhat skittish, and mistrustful of domesticated spaces.
I like the air a lot better, out here on the fringes of the medical world.
I begin blogging with an intention to share my personal practices with readers. I have developed practices that allow me to feel really wonderful about my life, most of the time. I have practices that allow me to recover quickly, when stressed. I have practices that allow me to find the humor in the moment, when the moments are ridiculous, and compassion in the situation when the situations are horrific.
I figured out these practices over the past two years despite— not because of—the “help” offered to me by my state’s conventional medical professional organizations. That is when I realized that a lot of us are getting “help” from a system that is actually shaming us, labeling us, and seeing pathology where there is “dangerous opportunity”.*
So the feral physician blog is launched. I promise myself that I will share my practices here, no matter how crazy or “woo woo” they might sound. Something is working very well for me, as I enter the second half (that’s right, I intend to live to be a hundred) of my life, and this “something” is worth sharing.
So, as Maurice Sendak would say, “Let the wild rumpus begin!”
* the Chinese pictogram for “crisis” is “danger” and “opportunity” combined…
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