The conversation was so riveting that I had to struggle not to stare. I caught myself and fiddled with my earbuds. I did my best to appear to be doing… anything other than blatantly eavesdropping. I couldn’t help it, though. This coffee shop trio was revealing a belief system that perplexed and fascinated me. I also felt like it might just hold the key as to why we’re so often talking past each other when it comes to health.
These were health people. Fitness people. Clearly. They had visible muscle definition and glowing skin. But they looked harried too. A pall had descended on their circle of friends. Maybe not friends, actually—I couldn’t tell. Perhaps it was someone in their workout community or… I don’t know… their meditation group or knife-fighting club. Their origins didn’t intrigue me so much as their focus, which was now so intense that my gawking had gone unnoticed.
The person they were discussing was fighting late-stage colon cancer. And it seemed like they weren’t so much empathizing as trying to solve the problem for him. This took the form of an escalating series of challenges. Here are some snippets:
Challenge: “Ultra-processed foods will do that to you.”
Response: “He eats whole foods only—and is very strict about it.”
Challenge: “But is he eating commercial meat?”
Response: “He is part of a co-op that gets him grass-fed meat. He knows the farmer personally. He even knows the names of the cows he eats.”
Challenge: “Does he exercise enough?
Response: “90 minutes every morning and 30 minutes every evening. Outdoors with primal movements. Recovery with cold plunges and sauna.”
Challenge: “Is he wearing commercial sunscreen?
Response: “After he gets a dose of unfiltered sunlight, he uses a SPF 50 raspberry seed oil mixture.”
It felt to me like the goalposts were being continually moved. Yet this guy was like Catherine Zeta-Jones (or was it John Malkovich?) in that cat burglar movie. They couldn’t catch this dude. His execution was perfect.
Challenge: “Is he eating store-bought yogurt?”
Response: “He makes his own kefir.”
At this point, things feel like they’re bordering on parody but the group keeps going—genuinely perplexed as to how cancer was possible. They were particularly distressed by the fact that he was undergoing harsh chemotherapy and—I think—that they couldn’t nail down where he had personally gone wrong.
I began to realize that their shared system of belief was that of total personal responsibility. It was a complicated series of tumbler locks (again with the burglars!) that—if you could crack—would insulate you from disease.
If you’re familiar with Bryan Johnson or other Silicon Valley billionaires who are hitting middle age and becoming increasingly unhinged about their own mortality, you’ll know about an extreme version of this culture. Johnson, who swallows 100 pills and supplements, dedicates 14-15 hours, and about $4,500 USD each day on wellness routines is taking a big swing at life-extension. He seems to believe that massive increases are within his grasp. Maybe an extra 100 years are achievable—but I’m not sure what that nets out to in terms of time not spent prolonging your life.
Here’s a nice visual that Canadian health policy wonks put together. It illustrates how personal health looks like an island—right until you zoom out and realize that the water surrounding it is part of that same ecosystem.
Zoom out even further and things change again. Here is a more widely-used model called the Social Determinants of Health
The perfection of the individual is a tempting belief system. While Buddhists speak of non-attachment, this feels more like avoidant attachment—a response to not feeling consistently cared for. And I suspect that this might be an escalating knock-on effect of how many of us feel about society writ large—with the impacts of this belief spreading much like wildfire.
I suppose that total control would be nice to have. To have the fates completely in your hands. This feels less ideological and more religious in spirit. Yet, the limits of our own control are less frightening when we make peace with them and re-invest some of our energies beyond our personal islands.
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