A Serious Vitamin Deficiency

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

As the power of the sun wanes and the season of summer passes away to make way for autumn I feel so much more secure knowing that I am beginning the coming cold half of the year without a serious vitamin deficiency.  There are certain challenges that I enjoy undertaking and others that I do not.  Entering a Minnesota winter with a vitamin deficiency is not a wise choice to knowingly make.  When I first moved to Minnesota nearly two years ago I arrived here not realizing I was deficient in vitamin D.  Looking back I likely was experiencing a low-grade depression for much of that winter.  A little over a year has now passed since my primary care physician wrote me a prescription for vitamin D.  I suspect it has made an enormous difference in my life.

Late last year I attended an outpatient treatment program at Abbott Northwestern Hospital.  It is perhaps an irony of ironies that I now work literally one floor above the floor where I attended that program last November.  While attending the program I recall the group therapist talking about vitamin F…namely the vitamin named Fun.  We humans cannot live indefinitely without this “vitamin” either.  I didn’t get enough “vitamin Fun” when I was a kid.  Now I am doing my best to address the consequences of this deficiency years later. 

These last twelve months have been some of the most grueling I have experienced in my adult life.  And yet I am a much better person for having undergone the transformation that I allowed to unfold in my life.  It took a lot of courage and determination to let go of an outmoded identity.  My recovery process now has such momentum that I firmly believe it would feel genuinely unnatural if I were to stop the various healthy habits I practice.  Getting enough Vitamin Fun has been a central part of my recovery process.  And it will continue to be important to me in my future as well.  It was a bit sad when I came to the sobering realization that my life had often been marked by a serious deficiency of Vitamin Fun.

Those skeptical of the modern construction of ‘childhood’ as a truly distinct time period within human development (replete with its own unique developmental needs and milestones) are perhaps not as prominent as they once were.  The fields of mental health in particular and human wellness in general have made extraordinary advances in the last several decades.  I have been fortunate (and at least a little wise) to educate myself to the point that I probably have a level of knowledge commensurate with a seasoned amateur in regards to the realm of mental health.  I have not memorized the DSM-V nor do I have any desire to do so.  I’m not that much of a glutton for punishment.

A certain phrase that remains vivid in my memory is one I have seen plastered on the sides of Metro buses here in the Twin Cities: “Play grows imagination”.  It thus must be conversely true that those whose lives are relatively devoid of play (especially early on in their most formative years) are more likely to live lives marked be a less than fully realized capacity for imagination.  I have come to the conclusion that we here in the West spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to ingest, synthesize and make sense of information.  We live in a supposed Information Age.  And yet I have long wondered if the larger supply of information now available to us is making us more informed, kinder, more thoughtful, more apt to make wise decisions and so on.  I personally find the proliferation of technology to be a bit ridiculous.  People have ‘smart’ phones now.  But what good are smart phones if people walk into telephone poles while looking at their phones?

Anyhow, back to the theme of fun and play.  I need to make more time for play in my life.  Feeding my so called ‘inner child’ will, in my opinion, help me to create enduring wellness.  And after the grueling journey of the last twelve months I do believe I deserve such joy.

I believe it is our birthright to experience joy.  

What brings joy to you?