Settling Body and Mind in an Imperfect World

A Mao's mother was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 35. This illness completely changed her life, and she became depressed. She hoped I could help her resolve not only her physical suffering but her spiritual suffering as well.

On the day she first came to me, I spent more than two hours listening to her pour out her heart. A Mao's mother's life had been unfortunate; she had never known her father's love from birth. Her biological father had his own family but still fathered her out of wedlock, so she was born an illegitimate daughter. Her father abandoned mother and daughter, and after this blow her mother's temperament became strange.

From childhood her mother felt an indescribably complex emotion toward her—both care and aversion, sometimes feeling that the daughter had dragged down her own life. A single woman raising a daughter indeed goes through untold hardships. Moreover, her mother had a cleanliness obsession and controlled A Mao's mother with exceptional strictness.

Her own relatives were also unkind to the mother and daughter, giving them little care. A Mao's mother grew up in discrimination, lacking a sense of security, longing to be loved but unable to trust love; as a result, her own love life and marriage were also unhappy. She felt that this unfortunate life had caused her to develop breast cancer.

Sobbing, A Mao's mother told her story, begging me to give her a little more time to finish pouring out her suffering because she had nowhere else to release it. When she finished, she wept uncontrollably. I handed her some tissues and waited for her to recover from her agitated emotions before talking with her.

For patients like this, who encounter real difficulties in life, I do not know what use empty words of comfort have.

So after we had been silent for a long while, I told A Mao's mother some of my own views on life. I shared with her a period of suffering I went through in my early twenties, when I had just come from the countryside to the city, penniless and with no relatives to turn to. Besides farming, my father did some small business, but the venture failed. My parents had to support the tuition and living expenses of two sons in college, and the family was strapped to the extreme.

My heart could not bear it, so I decided to sacrifice myself for the family's sake and left school to work. But because I lacked social experience, I was instead cheated out of the little money I had left.

For a while, I had to eat only one meal a day, and I was so hungry that I stole unripe peaches from farmers' orchards to fill my stomach, which resulted in nonstop diarrhea. I was very thin at that time due to long-term malnutrition.

This is a true episode of my own experience. During that period I also suffered various discriminations—though of course these were personal feelings I magnified at the time; in reality my teachers and classmates never discriminated against me. They were very friendly and kept helping me; when I later dropped out, they still tried every way to persuade me to stay. Even now they still appreciate, care for, and love me.

Back then, in order to get the school to waive my tuition and grant me a loan scholarship, I exaggerated the losses the 1998 floods had caused my family. As a result I lost the trust of my teachers and classmates, who doubted my character. This is a stain on my life of which I am still ashamed; it constantly reminds me to be honest, otherwise I will pay a huge price. During those days I thought about suicide, and also thought about vanishing from the circle of people I knew, moving to a completely strange environment, and rewriting my life.

A Mao's mother was astonished; she had not imagined I had such a history. My story shifted her attention, making her temporarily forget her sorrow; she became curious about how I had walked out of that difficult period. In her view I always seemed such a sunny person; she had never imagined my life also had shadows.

I told A Mao's mother that actually I was just like her: the way she had struggled to live into adulthood was exactly how I had walked out of those shadow-filled years. We are like plants and trees growing in rock crevices, able to survive as long as there is a little soil. What we rely on is the will to survive that heaven has bestowed on us; it is just that many people do not realize this exists within themselves.

From the moment a person is born into this world, they are destined to coexist with all kinds of difficulties and disappointments until death. Because we are essentially just a biological species, and the natural and social environments we depend on for survival will not always make us comfortable. Only those who can adapt to these and can settle their body and mind in this imperfect world are the ones who survive.

If one cannot understand and accept this, various dissatisfactions and resentments will inevitably arise. Understanding and accepting this reality, then striving to transform our living environment while constantly adjusting our body and mind so that the conflict between the two is not great—this is the choice we, as human beings, are compelled to make.

Natural selection, survival of the fittest. Everyone suffers difficulties; human living conditions are not that good. In ancient times, our ancestors had to coexist with all kinds of fierce beasts in nature and struggle against harsh natural environments; human wisdom evolved in precisely these circumstances.

So rather than being self-pitying and resentful, it is better to strive constantly for self-improvement. I believe A Mao's mother has this spirit of self-improvement in her bones; otherwise she could not have grown to adulthood, gotten into college, and built a career. It is just that when new difficulties arrived, she was momentarily at a loss and had no time to organize her emotions.

I asked her to recall how she had overcome one difficulty after another from childhood to adulthood. After thinking for a while, A Mao's mother said she felt what I said indeed made sense; she was not actually afraid of difficulties, she just felt bitter inside. With someone helping her sort out her thoughts, she again gathered the courage to live.

From then on, A Mao's mother and I became very close friends; to this day she remains my loyal patient and reader. One day she voluntarily told me that my words back then had given her a sudden awakening, and that from then on she had almost been born anew. Since changing her perspective, A Mao's mother's life has changed greatly.

She had once wanted to give up on herself, but after that exchange she fully adopted the comprehensive treatment plan I suggested. After integrated Chinese-Western treatment, A Mao's mother is now in CR (complete remission), with no sign of recurrence for five consecutive years. Moreover, her career goes better than before, and her family relationships have improved considerably. Even in matters of parenting, she was influenced by me to adopt an attitude of letting nature take its course, and handles the parent-child relationship very well.

I asked her whether I could share her story to encourage other patients—when sharing a patient's story, I need to obtain the patient's own consent. A Mao's mother readily agreed, only asking me to conceal her real personal information.

I do not know where a perfect world exists; since I was born into this world, I myself have always been subject to all kinds of challenges. Even now, all kinds of difficulties still try to defeat me, and many people try to strike and destroy me. A Mao's mother's experience was the same; I believe that even though her fate now seems to be turning for the better, she will certainly still encounter many new difficulties. Her life will still not be smooth sailing, and her world will not be perfect.

But she, like me, possesses the ability to settle her body and mind in an imperfect world, so even though real life is constantly stormy, we can still respond calmly. We cannot expect the years to truly be peaceful and quiet, but as long as we can settle our body and mind in an imperfect world, we can remain at ease with everything.