Have you ever woken up at 3 a.m. worried because you forgot to send an email, didn’t finish that super “important” report, or trying to decipher some cryptic words from your boss? You’re not alone.
Modern life trains us to collect problems like stickers , each one seeming vital, urgent, and unpostponable. But, curiously, when our health fails, everything that seemed so extremely important ceases to be. What was urgent is no longer so, and what kept you up at night and prevented you from living in peace is now irrelevant. Life suddenly puts things into perspective – and it does so with brutal effectiveness.
When life puts us on forced pause
Psychologists at the University of Gothenburg surveyed more than 200 people diagnosed with a chronic illness and found that the most common feeling was sadness and worry about their health. All other problems had practically vanished. Not that a study was needed to see this: when we’re unwell, our list of worries shrinks considerably.
In fact, looking back, those worries will probably seem downright ridiculous because when we get sick, our perception of life is completely redefined. That overdue report that seemed like a catastrophe, or the argument with a friend that had us on edge for weeks… all of that simply fades away in the face of the overwhelming need to recover.
This phenomenon of re-evaluating and relativizing life’s problems isn’t exclusive to serious illnesses. Even a cold that keeps us in bed can act as a priority radar. While our body fights the fever, the mind begins to filter out what’s essential, so pending emails or that 10 a.m. meeting lose their relevance.
However, why wait until you have a health problem to put things into perspective?
The disease filter
Most of us continue to accumulate trivial problems as if they were medals. We dwell endlessly on minor difficulties and worry about things that, from a strictly biological and existential point of view, are as “important” as deciding what color napkin to use.
The lens of illness or vulnerability helps us understand that we won’t live forever and that, except to our loved ones, we are replaceable. You are not indispensable at your job. Your absence, however noticeable, rarely changes the dynamics of the world.
And you don’t have to wait until you get sick to learn that lesson.
We need to learn to put life’s problems into perspective. And putting things into perspective doesn’t mean becoming apathetic or neglecting our responsibilities. It means recognizing that everyday stress often stems from problems we’ve blown out of proportion and that we’re experts at artificially inflating our to-do list.
That argument that’s making your blood boil today will probably be forgotten in weeks, and a few minutes’ delay in your mail probably won’t cause an apocalypse. Most of the problems that keep us up at night are just small shadows our imagination casts on a much larger canvas of reality.
Illness acts as a natural filter, helping us understand what truly deserves our mental energy. In fact, a study conducted at the University of Manchester found that when faced with a serious diagnosis or a new illness, we tend to recalibrate our life and health priorities, focusing on what is truly essential.
How can we put things into perspective while we still have our health?
We can begin to evaluate every pending email, every notification, or every setback with the same magnifying glass we would use if we were in bed with a fever. Try this simple exercise: imagine you wake up sick that morning and ask yourself:
- Is this concern of mine still relevant?
- Would the world end if I didn’t take care of it today?
- If I do it, will it help me feel better or heal?
If the answer is no, then it’s likely a problem you’re amplifying.
And it’s not about being irresponsible, but about learning to manage stress levels and dedicating our energy and attention to what truly matters, without waiting for illness to force us to do so. Ultimately, it’s about having clear priorities in a world that constantly pushes us to deal with false emergencies.
Life works in layers: when we’re healthy, we accumulate layers of worries and problems, most of them artificial or exaggerated. When we get sick, all those layers fall away and what’s essential emerges: being alive, being able to move, eat, sleep, and above all, having the opportunity to enjoy what truly matters.
Learning to view our existence through this lens before a health problem forces us to do so is a form of wisdom, an antidote to unnecessary stress, and a kind of memento mori.
So the next time your boss demands something urgent, your favorite app crashes, or you get into an argument with someone, remember: your health is probably the only thing that truly deserves your undivided attention, at least if you want to keep enjoying everything else. The rest… well, it’s just background noise, and noise, as we know, is much more bearable when we learn to put it into perspective.
References:
Benkel, I et. Al. (2020) Living with a chronic disease: A quantitative study of the views of patients with a chronic disease on the change in their life situation. SAGE OpenMed; 8: 2050312120910350.
Morris, R.L. et. Al. (2011) Shifting priorities in multimorbidity: a longitudinal qualitative study of patient’s prioritization of multiple conditions. Chronic Illn; 7(2): 147-161.
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