Illness knocks a lot of nonsense out of us; it induces humility, cuts us down to our own size. It enables us to throw a searchlight upon our inner selves and to discover how often we have rationalized our failures and weaknesses, dodged vital issues and run skulkingly away. For only when the way straitens and the gate grows narrow, do some people discover their soul, their God, or their life work.

Florence Nightingale, too ill to move from her bed, reorganized the hospitals of England. Semi-paralyzed, and under the constant menace of apoplexy, Pasteur was tireless in his attack on disease. The great American historian Francis Parkman is a triumphant prototype of all such conquerors of the pain. During the greater part of his life, Parkman suffered so acutely that he could not work for more than five minutes at a time. His eyesight was so wretched that he could scrawl only a few gigantic words on a manuscript, yet he contrived to write nearly 20 magnificent volumes of history.

Even pain confers spiritual insight, a beauty of outlook, a philosophy of life, an understanding and forgiveness of humanity-in short, a quality of peace and serenity-that can scarcely be acquired by the “owner of pure horse flesh.” Suffering is a cleansing fire that chars away much of the meanness, triviality and restlessness of so-called “health.” Milton declared, “Who best can suffer, best can do.” The proof is his Paradise Lost written after he was stricken blind.
- Louis E. Bisch ©