My lower back is like World War III

“You cannot use that chair,” Bashir scolded me. “It is me versus that chair. If you use that chair, everything I do will be in vain!”

Bashir is my physiotherapist, and it is gradually becoming clear that in the ongoing saga of my lower back, my desk chair is Bashir’s nemesis.

The desk chair has some sentimental value. I think my mom got it for me, so I’ve held on to it through my past four house moves. The problem is that the chair was designed for form more than function.

The back of the chair only comes up to the middle of my rear torso. Also, in the place where there could have been some lumbar support, the chair has a gaping hole.

This allows the timber backrest to merge with the armrest and complete an elegant sweep around the occupant.

My desk chair is design poetry made manifest.

It looks great, but my deskchair allows my spine to slump and fold like a crepe, and it renders me essentially crippled after two weeks of use.

Then it’s back to see Bashir, and the process begins again.

Bashir is far and away the best physio I have ever encountered. He does the acupuncture, deep tissue massage, and he manages to get so many cracks out of my spine, it sounds like a rockfall at Western Deep Levels.

But if my lifestyle choices – especially that bloody chair – do not support good spinal health, I cannot expect Bash to keep me healthy on just a couple of visits per year.

On my last visit, I sheepishly took down the number of a chair supplier, and I promised that as soon as I get some bucks in, I’m going to be investing in a new chair.

It’s a shame, though, because that chair really looks good in my work area. And my mom got it for me.

This got me thinking of the eternal balance between lifestyle and recovery. How much of what ails us, and prevents us living our lives the way we’d like, is a direct result of the way we live our lives?

We mess ourselves up, because we enjoy it, or that’s the way it’s always been done, and then we pay people money to fix us.

The professionals dutifully fix us, and then recommend a set of lifestyle changes that will prevent the problem recurring.

We ignore their advice, go back to our old ways, and then report back three months later with a stuffed back, walking sideways like a crab, because that chair means a lot to us, and new chairs are expensive.

On a macro level, humanity similarly creates its own problems through the way it goes about its business.

Then it lapses into chaos, war, disease and environmental catastrophe, political disasters occur and civilisations collapse.

We limp into some kind of multilateral physio office and groan.

“We’ve stuffed everything up. Please fix us.”

The banks, our allies, our neighbours and a team of global advisors might magnanimously agree to put us back together again, if we’re lucky.

They’ll admonish us, and warn what we need to change our ways if we’re going to avoid future disaster.

“If you don’t want another world war, you need to avoid nationalism, pride, fascism and military imperialism,” the advice goes. “Otherwise, it’s all going to happen again.”

Unfortunately, like a deskchair your mom got you for your birthday, those unfortunate, damaging human crutches are very close to our hearts. We battle to do without them.

Letting go of those things is key to our healing. But it’s just so hard to do!