A "Functional" Life

In my 65-year journey around this planet, I have generally done my best to steer clear of the plethora of diagnoses that seem to be inherent within a system that loves to medicalize every conceivable thing.

While science and medicine undoubtedly have helped improve the quality of life for many people, I think the understanding gained is often misaligned and misapplied in service of maximizing profit rather than maximizing health.

At least that holds true here in the USA.

So I have avoided these diagnoses — at least in the formal sense, as applied by some medical professional — because I'm not convinced that simple coping skills and management aren't more effective than other approaches, and pareticularly pharmaceutical ones. That is not to say that I haven't studied various conditions to have a better understanding, so that I actually had an idea of what I was doing when I applied my management skills.

To my mind, there's quite a bit of difference between outright rejecting a condition of something real, and simply refusing to be shoe-boxed into a specific course of treatment by a standardized understanding of aforesaid condition.

I have periodically had discussions with doctors and the general consensus has been that the purpose of the diagnosis is to help me live "a functional life."

The thing that troubles me about that particular assertion is the fact that I am not entirely in alignment with the "who" of who decides what "a functional life" looks like.

More often than not when I poke beneath the surface what I find there is not necessarily that anybody is interested in my actual life being functional at a personal level, but that it be compliant with a certain metric used by society to measure what is "acceptable." In other words, I have to be productive, and hard-working, and follow prescribed ways of doing things.

Even though we (allegedly) highly value "rugged individualism" here in the USA, we also tend to be suspicious of it, if it doesn't happen to fit into a neat pigeonhole that everybody understands. Interesting paradox, isn't it?

I remember one particular dialogue I had with my physician about 15 years ago, and she insisted that a particular type of medication for ADHD would help make me "more productive." But who is to say that more productive is what I really want to be? Whose assessment is that?

What I actually want to be is not more productive, I want to be at peace with myself and I want to be able to hold a thought for more than 5 seconds. Being "more productive" suggests that my objective in life is wealth building, which it is not. My objective is comfort building; contentment building.

In looking at life, and the people in it, I'd say I'm pretty functional, at least by my own measures.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of your week!

How about YOU? Have you every questioned a medical or psychological diagnosis, because it didn't fit your desired outcome? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 2026.08.05 00:14PDT
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