The Choice is Ours!

The Story of Cessar and Dillon

I've had an idea for a story/fable floating around in my head for sometime now, but always felt I lacked the writing abilities (or time to develop them) to properly convey it in proper story form. Since this story of my imagination deals with exactly what I’m trying to convey this week, I’m hoping a storyline synopsis will suffice to make my point:

This story involves identical twin brothers named Cessar & Dillon whose parents had died and were orphaned as infants. They are “adopted” by a landowner whose primary motive for taking them in, is as slave laborers to work in the construction of his mountaintop palace.

When the brothers reach the age of 9 they are deemed fit to work. Their primary task is simply to carry stone up the mountain to be used in the building of this massive palace. Unfortunately, they were immediately separated and sent to work from the quarries on opposite sides of the mountain.

On the way to his quarry, Cessar shared the trip with another slave child who told him how cursed they were and how all that lay ahead of them was a future of misery and toil and that they could only grow up to become old, broken and weary.

On the way to his quarry however, Dillon traveled with a companion who had spent his last years hungry and on the streets and he marveled at the strength of the fellow slaves they were seeing and proclaimed to Dillon what a blessing it was for them that they will be fed and housed and will one day grow to be as strong as can be!

Each twin had a different master but they both demanded the same minimum volume of stone to be hauled up the mountain from their child each day. They each received the same food & rest. Everything from a physical standpoint was exactly the same for each child.

Throughout the years, their attitudes managed to shape the men they’d become and though their work or labor was identical, as I’m sure you’ve already surmised, Cessar grew into a broken and sickly man while Dillon thrived, grew strong and had become a formidable individual, both inside and out.

In my story, each child would meet, by chance, at the top of the mountain only every year or so and, though their taskmasters treated them identically, they would share their different experiences with dramatic contrast. While Dillon grew strong and thrived, Cessar grew frail and was broken. They each believed their environments were opposite even though they weren’t actually any different at all.

So, with that groundwork laid, let me fill in the thoughts and details behind what would have accentuated their specific encounters through their dialogue and what made their perspectives and outcomes different in the story (that part of writing this story would have actually required writing talent!). It's this background in reality which I believe would give this fable some valid lessons for us in our real lives as well.

Placebo, Nocebo, It’s All In Your Head!

I’ve become a real fan of the work of a Dr. Ellen Langer, a Harvard social psychologist whose experiment and study entitled “Counterclockwise” brought her considerable attention. In her book she describes this experiment she’d done with two groups of elderly men. A control group of older men were told that they would attend a retreat where they would spend a week “reminiscing” about the past; the experimental group, by contrast, would spend a week surrounded by paraphernalia from twenty years earlier, listening to radio shows and discussing news from the period. They were not allowed to bring up any events that happened after 1959, and they were to refer to themselves, their families, and their careers as they were at that time.

They were instructed to think and behave as if they were actually living in the past. They were given various tests to determine their current physical abilities before and after the week was through.

At the end of the study, the control group remained primarily the same while the experimental group actually demonstrated marked improvement in their hearing, eyesight, memory, dexterity and appetite. Some who had arrived using canes, dependent on the aid of their children, walked out under their power, carrying their own suitcases.

In another study that Langer worked on, they took 84 hotel maids from seven different locations. Their jobs were obviously taxing and they were very active while they worked. When asked about exercise however, 66.6% of them reported not exercising regularly, and 36.8% said they didn’t get any exercise at all. They then took standard measurements of health (weight, blood pressure, body fat, waist-to-hip ratio, and body mass index) and also divided them into a control group and experimental group. The experimental half of the maids were then taken to an hour long presentation describing the surgeon general’s recommendations for exercise and showed them that they were, in fact satisfying those recommendations. This presentation also included examples of how their work actually was indeed exercise. Nothing changed but the fact that one group knew that what they were doing was good for them. As it turned out, the control group remained unchanged while the experimental group improved in every metric!

We’ve all heard of the placebo effect but we’re learning more everyday about how powerful it is. There’s another mental effect of the opposite kind which few have heard of called the “Nocebo Effect”. Medicinenet.com defines a Nocebo as:

A negative placebo effect as, for example, when patients taking medications experience adverse side effects unrelated to the specific pharmacological action of the drug.”

As it turns out, some patients will get a particular side effect simply from hearing about it! These are not insignificant minor actions. In a Smithsonianmag.com article on the Nocebo effect they report of the following incident:

“The nocebo effect might even be powerful enough to kill. In one case study, researchers noted an individual who attempted to commit suicide by swallowing 26 pills. Although they were merely placebo tablets without a biological mechanism to harm the patient even at such a high dose, he experienced dangerously low blood pressure and required injections of fluids to be stabilized, based solely on the belief that the overdose of tablets would be deadly. After it was revealed that they were sugar pills, the symptoms went away quickly.”

So, from a physiological standpoint, the contrast between my two characters, Cessar and Dillon could be great indeed. In considering these physiological adaptations to stress (especially for the elderly), I believe we can we surmise that the same 50 lbs lifted 20 times as part of a workout to build one up in positive expectation as exercise could likewise breakdown another individual when borne in fear and negativity as work?

It is, in my opinion, the supplement of “Positive Attitude” that is indeed the most important pre/post workout supplement to take for the majority of my older clients. We have to know that our efforts will reap the benefits we seek! But this is still only a small part of the story.

Life is 10% What Happens & 90% How You React to It!

Such a wonderful quote from pastor Charles Stanley. How true! Much of the dialogue in story I was intending to write would demonstrate the differences in lifestyle associated with our attitude and would want you to consider these choices from each character's perspective:

While Cessar would spend his free time escaping his misery with drugs, alcohol & gambling to glean as many moments of pleasure as possible, Dillon would make sure his diet and rest was sufficient to help build him up. Cessar would do his work half heartedly and would cheat whenever possible while Dillon would aim for bigger and better challenges in an attempt to be the best he could. The world of Cessar would be filled with bitterness, resentment and jealousy all in an environment of overall hostility. Dillon, on the other hand would learn teamwork, experience pride in accomplishment and participate in the celebrations that come when significant goals are attained.

Attitude is everything and it changes our perspective in everything we do. This perspective, either negative or positive, controls our physical well being, determines the choices we make as we fashion our environments around us and it is critical in developing the social environment in which we contribute to and receive from. Perhaps the next time we are faced with a challenge of any sort, we can ask ourselves how we can change our perspective so we might consider it an opportunity to grow!

Perspective Makes All the Difference!

If we look at aging as a negative slide downhill, it will be. If, on the other hand, we see aging with the realization that it doesn’t have to be marked by disruptive and debilitating decline we can be free to enjoy a time of tremendous opportunities. We can envision our extra 10, 20, 30 or even 40 years more as not only extra years, but of extra years to be lived to the fullest!

What a shame it is that lives are disrupted needlessly and what a shame it will be if we fail to make the most of these extra years we've been granted ourselves!