Are you determined to be who you are?

Are you pre-set to be healthy or unhealthy?  Are there a set of patterns or laws that determines the outcomes of everyday events, including your health?  Determinism is the philosophy that holds just such beliefs.  Everything is preordained, without escape clauses or ways around them.  Classical scientific thinking is rigidly deterministic.  There is no chance for surprises, creativity, or influence on your part.  In other words, there is no chance for chance.

We are a large part of the equation and need to take responsibility for our health.

Far too often I am confronted with this viewpoint (whether or not they know it) in a health care setting.  The ridged deterministic science has influenced its way into social, environmental, and psychological thinking.  As all of these disciplines are involved with health, we seem to be caught in a trap whose theory is unyielding.  We need to realize that health is an infinite number of potentialities.  There are far more ‘what might be’ than there are declarations of cement. We are a large part of the equation and need to take responsibility for our health.  Determinism has no place in our health thinking framework or mindset. Eventualities of health are in our realm of influence.  The blame or praise is ours.