Canadian Physicians for Life Learning Platform

Isolation, anxiety, loneliness, addiction, abandonment, estrangement… These are just some of the issues that have consequences everyday– both for personal and public health. 

In an essay, author and poet Wendell Berry offers this analysis: 

In fact, people use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from their families and their neighbors. It should tell us something that in healthy societies drug use is celebrative, convivial, and occasional, whereas among us it is lonely, shameful, and addictive. We need drugs, apparently, because we have lost each other.

How can we find each other again? 

How can we restore the aspiration for community and belonging over and against the mediocre and less-satisfying values of autonomy and sheer independence?

This year, the theme of our CPL Annual Conference is: “We Belong to One Another.” Together, during the conference, we will explore how the challenges of belonging and community pertain to the sphere and aims of medicine.