THE UNDERCURRENT
What is happening with healthcare in America?
You may think it’s about politics. It is not.
You may think it’s about policy. It’s not.
You may believe it’s about good financial planning. No, it’s not.
If you know people who will be impacted by the Graham-Cassidy bill up in Congress now, you can clearly see that the bill will cause great harm to them. It will cause great harm to millions of others in our country, too. Perhaps even you, yourself … if not now, at some point in your life.
Physicians, as part of their passage into practicing medicine, commit to do no harm. Some of them do anyway, but many don’t. Have you ever heard of a governmental leader committing to do no harm? I haven’t either. But it needs to be part of the passage into governing or leading in any way.
So, if what’s happening with healthcare in America isn’t about politics, or policy, or good financial planning, what is it about? It’s about human willfulness. My understanding and definition of willfulness is when you do or attempt to do something – the consequences be damned. The key phrase: “the consequences be damned.”
And that is what is happening with our healthcare. That is what’s happening with our ability to have safe, secure, affordable, and accessible medical care when we need it. People are willfully attempting to destroy our healthcare system for their own benefit . . . under so many guises.
And how do people become willful? It is a defense we create when we’re young, a defense against wounds we experienced in our lives long ago. Perhaps our parents, or someone else in our young lives, willfully did things that harmed us … the consequences be damned. Perhaps we reacted in kind. Perhaps we passed it on to others more vulnerable than we were, or maybe even willfully harmed ourselves.
Willfulness is a current in each of us. Some of us don’t know about it at all. Some of us know about it and have healed it. Some of us know about it and try to keep from acting on it, not knowing it is possible to heal. Some of us know about it and act on it with awareness and intent.
Most of us deny it even exists – in others and in ourselves. How is it that so many of our leaders are acting on their willful aspects all at the same time … in relation to our health and well-being? Our denial has allowed it to come so far out into the open that it has become undeniable.
So now we have a choice.
Even though it is undeniable, we can still attempt to deny it – in ourselves and our leaders. We can, like little children who want to deny that mommy or daddy is willfully doing harm to them, transfer that onto our leaders, and want to deny that in our leaders. And we can, like little children who don’t want to “get in trouble” deny it in ourselves.
Or … we can see the willfulness, name it, hold our leaders accountable for their willfulness, and stop them … while at the same time exploring, discovering, finding, and healing our own willfulness. Then, and only then, can we be certain that we are not coming from a place of willfulness, but rather that we are coming from a place of real truth within ourselves, and from a truly loving place at the same time.
© Judith Barr, 2017.