WELLNESS | SELF-AWARENESS
What Does it Mean to Live Well in an Age of Wanting to Live Longer?
Is pursuit more important than contentment?
I was visiting an acupuncturist, hoping to find better solutions to my eczema, which wraps around the back of my right ear but has recently moved down the side of my neck and into my ear.
After working with a naturopath for many years, I was told that eczema is connected to the liver—period. The explanation I was given is that when the liver is trying to detox and can’t, it will look for the next largest organ, which is the skin.
That sounds logical, right? This acupuncturist gently explained that it’s not the eczema that points to an organ but a combination of the eczema and its location. According to Korean medicine, since mine is around the ears, it would be connected to the kidneys.
This was a consultation session, so he asked questions and took notes. At one point, he said something that stopped me in my tracks, “In Korean medicine, it is better to live well than to be concerned about living longer.”
At that moment, we were talking about cholesterol levels. He explained that in Western medicine, doctors are concerned with living longer, but in Korea, it wasn’t until just after World…
