The Winter of our Lives

The other day a patient came into my office. She is in her 70's and generally healthy and robust. Her main physical problem is a slight motor issue which can make doing certain tasks hard and slow. She's a very active person with a lively and engaged mind. Usually upbeat, she told me that she had been having an emotional hard time over the last week. She had feelings of grief, anxiety and fear.

She had never had the holiday blues before but the catalyst for these emotions was holiday wrapping. For the last couple years she has had a friend come over and help wrap presents and they always have a wonderful day. But this year, it really hit her that it wasn't just fun to have her friend help - it was increasingly necessary. So she wanted to ask me if I had noticed any degeneration in her condition since last year.

I told her, honestly, no - she seemed just as functional if not more so. So why did it bother her this year? What brought on these emotions?

In traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), everything is interrelated - mind, body, spirit, environment, seasons, diet, life stages..... everything. In this system, Winter is associated with the element of Water and thus, also the Kidneys. Besides their role in water elimination, the Kidneys are considered the Mingmen or Life Gate. When you were conceived, the two sparks of life from your parents came together and started cell division. As you developed, that primal flame of Life came to reside in/around the Kidneys. Thus, the Kidneys are responsible for human development; physically in bones, teeth, hair and brain and mental and emotional development. Problems in proper development (delayed or premature stages) are due to Kidney problems.

We have a finite amount of that life spark and we use it a little each day. The Kidneys' association with Water and Fire (the life spark) becomes especially apparent with old age. The Kidneys no longer process Water well and so our skin gets dry, menstruation stops, our hair falls out and our bones get brittle. This dryness can also make us prone to inflammations such as arthritis. The reduced Fire makes our hair white, our vision less clear, slows our metabolism so we get paunchy and takes away our ability to stand up tall and straight or move quickly. We are also more tired.

My patient had also had several close friends die in the past year. Fear is the emotion of the Kidneys because when we lose our Life Spark, we die.

Winter had never bothered her before. But this year, the combination of her unconscious lingering grief from losing her friends, combined with the cold and dark of Winter and its energetic effects on her Kidneys set the stage so that her own physical limitations (which had never gotten her down) reminded her of her own mortality - and that was scary.

Massaging her Kidneys regularly, keeping the area warm, warm comforting foods and friends to remind her body and mind that she is alive, and a recommendation that she use some of this dark and quiet time to honor her grief - for her friends and for her own waning vitality - sent her on her way.

She'll be fine. But no matter how old or young we are - each day we die a little more. We do things we regret or we miss opportunities that will never come back. The present, which is the only place where we are alive, slips ever into the past never to return. Every day is a Winter (and a Spring, Summer, and Fall) of our Lives. We can either deny it and focus on our future dreams (or past glories), or we can be in the Present, the Now. To Live and Die ecstatically and continuously - in joy and in fear, in light and in dark - planting and spreading new Sparks by creating new Life (artistically, socially, biologically, spiritually or whatever) until the day our own Spark extinguishes. That is all we can do.