Saints and Sinners: Will can be a powerful friend
On one of my rare visits to California, I met the grandmother of a Hollywood actress while I was visiting a friend’s home. During the course of our conversation, I asked the woman if she lived alone.
“Oh, dear, no,” she said. “I live with four men — Art, Will, Jack and Ben.”
Pleased with the wide-eyed reaction that produced, she went on to explain.
She said, “I wake up with Art Ritis. I couldn’t make it through the day without Will Power. Jack Daniel and I live it up at the happy hour at five every afternoon, and I go to bed with Ben Gay.”
Most of the older ones among us are well acquainted with two of the men Grandma lives with — Art and Ben. We probably met Jack much earlier in life, and we still maintain our friendship with him.
But we can’t claim Will Power as a close friend. Some of us, as a matter of fact, can’t even remember him.
Certainly we haven’t heard much about Will Power for a long time now. That’s all right with us. We never really liked him. He always seemed to be talking about self-denial and the delights of deferred satisfaction.
Self-indulgence and instant gratification were more down our line. We thought of Will Power as an old spoilsport. We prefer friends who are more fun.
If Will Power has any friends at all today, they are either dieters or people who need a strong arm to hang on to just to get around. In neither case does it amount to a love affair.
Will Power sometimes goes under another name — Mind over Matter. That is because, in Will’s philosophy, the mind is called upon either to overcome the lethargy of the body or to overcome the body’s demands for sensual satisfactions — like food, drink or sex — when those demands get out of line.
The body, of course, must not be thought of as a selfish clod, concerned only that its appetites be filled. It has a built-in intelligence of its own that is frequently superior to anything our minds can come up with. It performs services for us that we could never perform for ourselves.
The late Dr. Richard Cabot of Massachusetts General Hospital once told the story of a 65-year-old auto accident victim who was brought to the hospital and died soon afterward.
At the autopsy it was discovered that the man had had four “fatal” diseases during his lifetime — none of which he had been aware of. These diseases had either healed themselves or the body had found new ways to carry on the functions of the diseased organs.
It was Dr. Cabot’s conclusion after many years as a physician that “a gigantic healing power fights on our side. There is a great power in ourselves that makes for health and that works day and night, when we are asleep and when we are awake, and that performs its healing miracles with practically no help from us.”
But this same body, which does some of its best work without our supervision or interference — in fact, it is our interference with the workings of the body that gives us most of our health problems — needs constant supervision in another area.
Most of our problems are not caused by Art Ritis. And whatever our problems, they are only temporarily relieved by Jack Daniel and Ben Gay. It is the fact that we have dropped Will Power from our list of friends that has put us where we are today.
Now would be a good time to renew our acquaintance with Will Power. He could be the long-lost friend we are all looking for.
(George Plagenz is an ordained minister and veteran newsman based in Columbus, Ohio.)