Finding Balance Is Nature’s Way
By Paul Erickson, MD, MPH
In my work I have been privileged to spend the last 40 years listening to people. Most of this time has been spent in an exam or hospital room as a family doctor. Listening to understand, listening to help, listening and learning to find the right path. I have learned that developing respectful and healing relationships sprinkled with love is the richest of experiences. As a member of Pathways’ Integrative Health Advisory Committee, I have come to know that Pathways, too, has spent its life in the work of developing respectful, loving and healing relationships and for that I am grateful.
Finding balance is Nature’s way; the ebb and the flow, the darkness and the light, the openings and the closings. We are a part of these comings and goings and the COVID pandemic places us somewhere in a storm looking for fair skies. As I look and listen to the calamities of this virus, I wonder where the balance will be found.
And now, too, with these challenging times I see good things. The goodness and kindness of people reaching out to others. And the luxury of time! Time to think, to talk, to breathe and settle in. This gives me hope for our humanity. But I see despair too, the darker side of this pandemic. Folks without work, without income, without someone to be with to meet our need for social connection. People are hurting and we are all vulnerable. Pandemics have historically brought forth and revealed inequities that have pre-existed in communities. We are seeing this now. The rich are doing well, the poor are doing badly, and there are a lot of people in between who are hurting. We see the health disparities that have existed prior to this pandemic manifest in higher rates of infections and deaths. We are seeing imbalances in a society that is purported to be just. As these injustices are revealed, we realize we are not part of a just and equitable community. I do think this pandemic will change things and it will change us. And hopefully, from this change something good will come. A higher sense of justice, a shared consciousness for the common good – for all of us and for our earth. And maybe, we will look at all the time and money we spend on things that really don’t matter and look to ways to use our resources to promote justice, to protect and nurture our natural world and our health, to promote beauty, love and homemade fun.
In the end I think the ultimate goal is, “to love and be loved”. Our challenge is to figure out what that truly means. I would like to leave you with a poem.
May you find balance, peace and be well.
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
-Wendell Berry
Paul Erickson, MD, MPH is a family physician and medical director at NorthPoint Health and Wellness Center, a community health center in North Minneapolis. He is a faculty and staff physician at Hennepin Healthcare and is on Pathways’ Integrative Health Advisory Committee. He is board certified in Family, Adolescent, and Hospice and Palliative Care Medicine. He and his wife Ruth have four daughters.
