My book Crooked Lines is about healing. Healing is a mysterious process; a bit of alchemy is involved. Most of us will take a medicine to feel better, for example, aspirin, acetaminophen or an antibiotic. It trains us to think that the medicine is what heals us. But it's complicated because medicine starts a process in our bodies, but a lot depends on how our bodies react. And also on how our minds react.

When we're sick, we might be aware of how closely our body and mind are woven together--you could think of it like a basket. But if we are sick, the basket has loose fibers making for openings in it. I like the Japanese art form of Kintsugi. An artist doing Kintsugi mends a broken object made of pottery or ceramic by using lacquer mixed with gold or silver. This is an art form about finding beauty in repair, transience, and imperfection. In my analogy here, the artist is like a doctor and the lacquer is like the medicine. But how it holds together depends on the qualities of the pieces that have broken apart--these are like the body.

Most healing occurs through a challenge to put back together what has broken apart. The medicine we might take is important, but we are too because our bodies can respond differently depending on so many factors. How we will take up the challenge of being sick? Many times, we can't and the outcomes are terrible. But hopefully, we can find something in us to work in synchrony with the medicine. That's part of the mystery of healing.