The importance that we attach to personal identity is not without it's drawbacks. Tremendous energy can be consumed by the persistent effort required to sustain a desirable front. The work involved can be draining, even when one is in good health. When ill, the time and energy may not be available. A demoralizing crisis of identity may result. This is an important and common way that illness causes distress.
The search for a more desirable identity also results in competitive ambition. We find ourselves looking down on others who have not accomplished as much. We come to value some people less and others more. Our compassion for humanity becomes restricted by how important or unimportant different people are viewed. The pain of this competitive ambition led Franny (in J.D. Salinger's, Franny and Zooey) to say, "I am just sick of ego, ego, an ego. My own and everybody else's ... Its not that I'm afraid to compete ... I am afraid I will compete-that is what scares me. Just because I am so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else's values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, does not make it right. I am ashamed of it. I am sick of it. I am sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody."
Similarly, there are problems with our intense need for personal control. Many can avoid confrontation with uncontrollable or tragic illness for longer periods of time than was previously possible. Unfortunately, this is not always viewed as the result of medical advances and personal good fortune. We have come to expect good health. Or at least we expect to be saved by medical science. When serious illness occurs, our expectations are confronted. Illness challenges these and other inaccurate assumptions that we make of ourselves. As a result, our confidence is eroded at just the time we need it most.
Health has also come to be viewed largely as a product of one's own effort. Daily, we are told that we will stay healthy if we exercise, eat the right foods, don't smoke, or think positively. Many readers of this book will know firsthand that serious illness can occur regardless of any and all efforts to stay healthy. To exercise and eat properly will certainly help you feel at your best. It can lessen your chances of becoming ill with certain diseases. But nothing can guarantee that you will never become ill. We do not have that much control.
Unfortunately, our assumptions about one's potential for control can leave one are floundering when life-threatening illness occurs. A good analogy may be that of a champion swimmer who is so confident of her own skills that she goes sailing without a life jacket. A severe storm arises suddenly and overturns the boat. The swimmer is overcome and drowns. Those who read the newspaper the next day wonder why anyone would sail in a storm without access to a life jacket. But, this is just what many of us do. We sail through life, expecting nothing bad to happen and live as if we deny personal vulnerability. We are self-assured until a serious illness confronts us.