Cleanliness: Are We Too Clean For Our Own Good?
How many times a day do I reach over, hit the squirt top of an antibacterial gel, and rub my hands?
As I think about this practice, I sometimes wonder how I ever survived my childhood. How did any of us?
We didn’t have throwaway wipes and all the other things we use so readily today.
As children, we left home in the mornings during the summer and we played. Our imaginations guided us through game after game with our friends, no matter where the adventure took us—storm ditches, creeks, backyards, fields, woods—wherever an adventure was to be found and the owner was amenable to our presence.
I remember one time sitting at the bottom of the drainage ditch after one of the girls in our group coaxed us into making mud pies. Of course, at some point one of the kids decided it was a waste of effort and that we needed to create something edible. I don’t remember what they brought from the kitchen cupboard, but we created something and, believe it or not, we ate it. It didn’t kill us, although it probably wasn’t the smartest thing to eat.
It is amazing, though, the precautions we now treat as commonplace in order to avoid some type of infection.
When I was little and got sick, I knew it meant a trip to the doctor and a big needle in my future. I remember that while visiting my grandparents one time, that happened, and Dr. Stephenson had a needle that looked as long as a pitchfork prong. It seemed that way when it was stuck in, too.
I reckon, though, that we are facing different issues today. Pharmaceutical companies and doctors had not yet permeated our lives with medicines to the point that we reached a major level of overmedication. Today, we face diseases that the arsenal of medicine just can’t touch, largely because we have medicated too much at many levels, including the food we eat.
In many ways, in trying to make ourselves safer, we are actually making our systems weaker.
When we got sick and overcame it, our bodies were more likely the next time to fight off the same strain of bug with less effort if we encountered it again.
Now we spend our time trying to make our environment semi-sterile for the children around us and for ourselves.
Are we healthier? Perhaps we avoid more illness, but I don’t know if we are healthier. I’m afraid that with every squirt, rub, and pill, we are making our systems more dependent on something from outside to keep our bodies in good shape.
The obsessive-compulsive person within me has managed to overcome a lot of the habits that once led my family to compare me to the TV character “Monk.”
Despite my concerns, though, I still find it hard not to use an antibacterial.
Would you look at how dirty this computer keyboard is? Where is that rubbing alcohol? I bet I left it in that drainage ditch.
Read more of Randall’s writings in his books from our Store.
