Letting the Cancer Burn, Or Burst

I WATCHED Ninja Assassin lately, and I am impressed with the discipline against physical pain that this film talks about. That makes me understand the wisdom in Japanese poet Kenji Miyazawa’s words: “We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.”

The approaches between these two schools of thought, however, differ. The ninjas (in the movie) believe in the stoic way of killing the pain, so the will can gain full control of the body. Miyazawa proposed the opposite—embrace pain and let it become an intense fuel to propel one’s life.

Well, in healthcare both physical and mental, pain has its important role, too.

Primarily pain warns a person about... (Read more.)

This article appears in Sun-Star Cebu newspaper on 18 August 2010.

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