Dear Doctor:
I don’t watch much TV – outside the Yankee season, it’s mainly five minutes of the Weather Channel, occasional reruns of “Whose Line Is It Anyway,” and just enough SportsCenter to get by. But I love real adventure shows, not the formulaic, over-dramatized network pablum, but the off-Broadway stuff like on Discovery Channel, where Mark Burnett of “Survivor” got his start with the Eco-Challenge.
On the road more than usual, I got sucked into watching “Everest: Beyond The Limit,” a docu-reality show where expedition leader Russell Brice attempted to get a small party of mountaineers to the summit of Mount Everest, the highest point on earth and the holy grail of mountain climbing.
To say the conditions were difficult is the ultimate understatement – at forty degrees below zero, five miles up where the air has a third of the normal oxygen content, where altitude sickness meets hypothermia for a mind-and-body-numbing cocktail, these intrepid explorers exemplified the human spirit. Their dedication and determination to go where few had gone before, their willingness to put everything on the line, to risk life and limb, literally, was a spectacle to behold, and a true inspiration.
And on top of the incredible adversity, each climber had his own challenges – one veteran had lost both legs to frostbite, and was committed to becoming the first double amputee to summit, which he did. Another survived cancer, and yet another had multiple injuries from an accident, both of whom missed reaching the top by a hundred meters – they had to turn back or perish. The physical and emotional pain and hardship each faced was breathtaking, terrifying and infinitely satisfying.
I sometime wonder what it will take to wake the world up to the miracles of chiropractic. It’s so logical and natural once you realize the secret, the connection between structure and function, between “man the physical and man the spiritual,” as Palmer described it. But then I see examples of extreme persistence like these climbers, against all odds, and I realize we must carry on no matter what the cost, and get our message across, for the betterment of all humankind.
Look back over this year, and assess your investment of time, energy and capital in the things that are most important to you. If you’re like most of us, it will be a mixed bag – sometimes excellent, sometimes, somewhat less than excellent, and sometimes in between. No one gets it right every time, but think about those climbers – when they embarked on this journey, they knew they had to be near perfect for almost two months on that mountain, or else face failure, injury, and even death.
That’s what gripped me the most about Everest, symbol of the pinnacle of achievement -- the human drama, the pushing back against a hostile environment that kept saying no, while these brave souls dared to say yes. It makes me think of how powerful we are as a profession when we keep saying yes – yes to wellness, yes to getting the word out, yes to standing up to our detractors and declaring our worth as healers, yes to assuming our rightful place as leaders in the wellness movement.
A beautiful dream, and it can come true…when enough of us decide to climb our own private Everest.
Dennis Perman DC, for The Masters Circle
PS “The Master Plan” is coming to Dallas in January, and you won’t want to miss this “soup to nuts” presentation that covers not only new patient acquisition and patient compliance, but also features top speakers Guy Riekeman, Donald Epstein, Dave Jackson and David Koch. For info, please go to www.themasterscircle.com or call 800-451-4514. Get your New Year started right – please join us!
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