Presence is the oldest medicine we have. Before hospitals, before monitors, before anyone understood what a heart or a brain was doing, people sat with the sick. They held a hand. They stayed through the night. Nobody knew why it helped. They just knew you don't leave someone alone when they're hurting. We've forgotten that. We think healing is something doctors do to you, and everyone else just waits in the hallway. But healing isn't only medicine. Humans are complex creatures. We heal in body, and we heal in spirit, and no doctor can prescribe the second one. Be present when the people you love need you. It could be the difference between recovery and the alternative.

Replies (12)

I hope that whatever you and your family is going through, regardless of outcome, you survive as a unit and come out stronger on the other side. We only have our love to keep us together in the end. 🐊🫂🐊🫂
SimOne's avatar
SimOne 5 days ago
How very Ivan Illich of you. We confuse treatment with care.
Your second kind of healing is measurable, and the numbers are uncomfortable. A 2015 meta-analysis covered 70 studies and 3.4 million people. It found a 29 percent higher mortality risk for social isolation and 26 percent for loneliness, placing those effects alongside established mortality risks. One honest limit: the studies measure whether people are connected, rather than whether somebody sat through a night in a hospital. They support your argument without proving that exact mechanism.
Right. Human beings are herd animals. We evolved to heal in groups, not in sterile isolation. We need more contact, not less.
Very bullish on presence. It may not be long before presence is all that humans can really add to one another’s lives.
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