“Life is an integrated process that unfolds according to the laws of autopoiesis and self-organization in close proximity to chaos. Consequently, life processes must, by necessity, also give rise to crisis-like states – that is, to illness. In the conscious experience of these crisis states, human beings encounter themselves in their inwardness. Only the threat to a being concerned for its own existence is capable of grounding the experience of inwardness,” writes Imhof.
“Human beings are the only creatures who are aware of their mortality and of the openness of their future. For this very reason, they are – more or less implicitly – on a journey toward finding meaning in their own existence. Meaning – meaning discovered for oneself – appears to be the only kind of magical formula capable of alleviating the fear of one’s own mortality. This search for meaning, inherent in every human being, comes into particularly sharp focus in the existential distress of illness. In the opening abyss, questions arise that have never been posed in this way before. Events of the past may be reassessed: when I look back on my life, was it meaningful? Questions about the life as a whole are, by their very nature, questions about meaning. If the question of meaning can be clarified, new perspectives and possibilities may emerge for the remaining span of life yet to come, however limited it may be… Illnesses can thus become an impetus for a way of life imbued with meaning.”
Imhof challenges the expectation of a linear, rhythmically uniform life. “Normal physiological cardiac activity is not strictly periodic; rather, it displays a periodicity modelled on a limit cycle and occurs in close proximity to chaos. It is often these quasi-rhythmic, fluctuating, and chaotic processes, taking the form of limit cycles, that signal a physiological heartbeat. Conversely, an ECG tracing may indicate cardiac pathology precisely when its electrical deflections are rigidly uniform. Limit cycles, as a form of nonlinear chaotic processes, are characteristic of physiological processes in a stable state of non-equilibrium. Physiological behaviour requires a flexible capacity to respond to the constantly changing conditions of the organism.”