Around the sun leaving a bright trail behind. For more than
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83 LONELINESS Loneliness is a curious thing. Most of us can remember feeling most lonely when we were not in fact lonely at all, but when we were surrounded by people. Everyone has experienced, at some time, that utter sense of isolation that comes over you when you are at a party. It suddenly seems to you as if everybody knows everybody; everybody, that is, except you. This feeling of loneliness, which can overcome you when you are in a crowd, is very difficult to get rid of. People living alone are advised to tackle their loneliness by joining a club or a society, by going out and meeting people. Does this really help? There are no easy solutions. Your first day at work or at a new school is a typical situation in which you are likely to feel lonely. You feel lonely because you feel left out of things. You feel that everybody else is full of confidence and knows what to do, but you are helpless. The fact of the matter is that, in order to survive, we all put on a show of self-confidence to hide our uncertainties and doubts, Therefore, it is wrong to assume that you are alone. The trouble is that you may not be able to hide the fact that you are lonely, and the miserable look on your face might put people off. Thus, trying to look reasonably cheerful is a good starting point to combat loneliness. The next thing to avoid is finding yourself in a group where you are a stranger; that is, you are in the son of group where all the people already know each other. There is a natural tendency for people to stick together. You will do yourself no good by trying to establish yourself in a group which has so far managed to do very well without you. Groups generally resent intrusion, not because they dislike you personally, but because they have already had to work quite hard to turn the group into a functioning unit. To include you means having to go over a lot of ground again, so that you can learn their 'language' and get involved in their conversation at their level. In fact, the surest way of getting to know others is to have an interest in common with them. There is no guarantee that you will then like each other, but at least part of your life will be filled with sharing experiences with others. It is much better than feeling alone. If all this seems to be a rather pessimistic view of life, you have to accept the fact that we are all actually alone and that loneliness is sometimes unavoidable.
84 CHOOSING A CAREER One of the first things we try to find out about people is what their job is. It helps us to define their status. We can judge where they stand socially, and estimate how much they earn. However, it is more interesting to know how a man comes to choose his job than what he does. The trouble is that we often choose a career for the wrong reasons. Take, for instance, those people who 'follow in father's footsteps', either entering the same trade or profession, or inheriting the family business. John decides to become a doctor because his father was a doctor. In fact, the word 'decides' is too strong; he probably never even thought about it. Funnily enough, some people make the opposite decision, namely that whatever else they might do, they will certainly not do what their father did. Our teachers are the first to persuade us to choose a specific career, probably because we are top students in that subject. We may also be persuaded by people whom we admire to select a career for which we are unsuited. The attitude of our parents toward our choice of~ career is interesting. They are quite pleased when we announce our intention to study medicine, disappointed when we switch to languages and overjoyed when we finally Start to study law. Clearly, they have a definite idea of the benefits different jobs will bring. Even though they appear to leave the choice entirely to their children, they know that their children will Eventually respect their wishes. Apart from these pressures from parents, teachers and other people, we may choose a career due to factors such as the attractiveness of the profession or the prospect of earning a lot of money in a short time. It ought to be easy to choose a careen We only have to do those things for which we have a natural talent. It is a pity, therefore, that we have to decide about our future at a stage in our lives when we can easily be influenced by factors which have little or nothing to do with the main issue.
85 POWERS OF THE HUMAN BODY The human body is made up mainly of bone, muscle and fat. Some 639 different muscles make up about 45 per cent of the body weight. Each of these muscles has four different and measurable qualities. Jr can produce force which can be measured as strength of muscle. It can also store energy which permits it to work for extended periods of time independent of circulation. In addition, a muscle can shorten or be stretched. The combination of these four qualities of muscle is referred to as muscular power. If muscles are to function efficiently, they must be continually supplied with energy fuel. This is accomplished by blood, which carries the energy fuels from the lungs and digestive system to the muscles. The blood is forced through the blood vessels by the heart. The combined capacity to supply energy fuels to the working muscles is called organic power. The capacity and efficiency with which your body can function depend on the degree of development of both your muscular and organic powers through regular exercise. However, the level to which you can develop these powers is influenced by such factors as the type of body you have, the food you eat, presence or absence of disease, rest and sleep. You are physically fit only when you have developed your muscular and organic power. Genetics and health determine the top limits to which your physical capacity can be developed. This is known as your potential physical capacity'. This potential capacity varies from individual to individual. Most of us, for example, could train for a lifetime and never come close to running a four-minute mile simply because we weren't built for it. The top level at which you can perform physically right now is called your 'acquired capacity' because it has been acquired or developed through physical activity in your daily routines. You can avoid wastage of energy by acquiring a level of physical capacity well above the level required to perform your normal daily tasks. This can be done by supplementing your daily physical activity with a balanced exercise program performed regularly. Your capacity increases as you progressively increase the load on your muscular and organic systems.
86 MEDICINE IN THE SEVENTIES The successes and failures of scientific medicine came sharply into focus. New technology was available, but a more questioning attitude to drugs emerged. On 25 July 1978, a girl called Louise Brown became the world's first 'test-tube baby'. An egg from her mother's body had been successfully fertilized in a laboratory. For childless couples, the technique invoked new hope. Was it possible to manipulate human reproduction even more dramatically? Scientists developed 'cloning’ in the seventies. It means reproducing several identical living things from a single original. Gardeners have practised it for centuries by taking cuttings from one plant to produce others. Scientists managed to clone frogs, and people suggested that it might be possible to clone humans, too. Ira Levin examined the idea in his novel The Boys from Brazil. In it, cells from Hitler's body are implanted in women around the world to create a whole race of Hitlers. This was a terrible fantasy. But despite its possibility, most scientists rejected the idea that a complex organism such as the human body could ever be cloned. In 1979, Dr. Geoffrey Hounsfield won the Nobel Prize for physiology by developing the body scanner. This revolutionized X-ray techniques by scanning the body from all angles in three-dimensional sections. Drugs came under careful scrutiny. The morning sickness drug, Thalidomide, was found to produce deformed children, and the drug company was forced to pay millions of pounds in compensation. Doubts also grew about the contraceptive pill. Women over 35 who were heavy smokers were advised not to use it because of its dangerous side effects. In contrast, natural medicine became hugely popular, especially acupuncture, an ancient Chinese method of anaesthetizing patients by sticking pins into points in the nervous system.
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