On Fuzz, Personal Wellness, and Social Sanity

© Copyright 2025 by Dr. David Meredith, D.Ac.

A lot of “wellness” (however we want to use the word) is in “knowing where you begin and the other person ends.” I’ve used that expression a lot when it comes to helping people productively deal with emotions that comes from other people or outside situations. What are you going to let through your protective layer to affect your peaceful spirit? This is really a question of empowered choice. If we want to think of our emotions as “switches” that get flipped to create different states of being, to what do we want to give access to those switches? Upset can have such a profound negative effect on every level of our well-being, and yet this is a power over ourselves that we’re trained to give to other people and events without question. “She said XYZ, and so of course I had no choice but to become angry,” or “stressed,” or “jealous,” or… what have you. If P, then Q. We treat this like a fact of life, but another fact of life is that those feelings of upset, if prolonged, can lead to catastrophic health concerns.

A deeper wisdom recognizes that there is actually no line to where you begin and the other person ends, that we are  profoundly connected to the people around us, as they are to the people around them. Where does it end? Not with artificial boundaries like city lines, state lines, national borders; those are as arbitrary as deciding our physical influence ends at our skin, when in fact it radiates far beyond. What happens outside of where we assume our body ends actually has a deep impact on our internal selves, and we have the same effect on the outside world. This is why almost every cultural tradition and religion have at their essence a “golden rule” of “treat others the way you’d like to be treated,” because there really are no “others.” By tending to the world, we tend to ourselves, and vice versa.

In making these distinctions, I’m reminded of the roots of holistic medicine. Western medicine treats every part of our body as a separate entity from the rest. Every system, every organ, every tissue, every cell can be considered separately, taken apart and studied and influenced. Reductionism, ad infinitum. In more expansive thinking, it’s common for holistic doctors (such as myself) to speak in terms of “the body-mind connection.” Sometimes they throw in “spirit” and “emotions” to this mix, to indicate a greater whole.

I’ve been rereading Common Sense for the Healing Arts, by my friend and mentor, the late Bob Duggan. On this topic, he borrows from classical Chinese philosophy and medicine to conceive of an even more unified view. He writes:

Years ago, I heard the noted scientist Candace Pert remark that our ability to separate mind, body, and spirit was a result of Descartes’s giving the mind and spirit to the Pope so that science could have the body, and have it unencumbered by the rule of the church. Perhaps that is why the modern world speaks of body, mind, spirit, and emotions as separate realities. Yet our day-to-day experience—and, increasingly, scientific evidence—tells us that our spirit affects our body, and that the well-being of our body affects our spirit and emotions. Personally, I no longer use those distinctions. I find it more helpful to think in terms of a continuum of density: I think of my “humanbeingness” as expressed all the way from the heavy density of my bones to my thoughts—that least-dense aspect of one’s self, which, without any physicality, can touch another.

In the same chapter, Bob reflects on his friend, the noted physicist Hans Peter Dürr, who had another metaphor for this kind of thinking. As he lectured to a group, he would pull out a ball of string, toss it around, unwind it, and rewind it back into a ball.

“What holds it together?” he asks. People observe that the whole is held together by tiny bits of fuzz along the thread. No fuzz, no ball. “The fuzz,” he says, “is life’s love. It holds life together.”

It’s so easy to ignore life’s “fuzz.” Even scientific trials will control for or eliminate the “fuzz” that is fundamental to life. And yet, it’s the fuzz, the love—something that happens in our everyday interactions—that holds life together.

I’m building up to something, so let’s recap.

We can think of our body, mind, and spirit—and therefore every manifestation of those distinctions, from our bones to our  casual thoughts—as a continuum of “beingness,” from most to least dense, all aspects of which influence the whole.

In way, we can think of a society as a similar construct: the density of hard infrastructure, like roads and buildings; the squishy middle of human beings; the more ephemeral nature of ideals, values, and traditions. Each aspect affects all the others.

But now look at our society, right now, in 2025. Every aspect affecting every other… all aspects affecting ourselves… ourselves affecting other selves… and no recognition of any of this. It often feels like everything is coming apart, unwinding like Dr. Dürr’s ball of string. Where is the fuzz holding us together?

I say it’s kindness.

Kindness is the intentional and compassionate act of recognizing the needs of others and taking action to support their well-being, often without expecting anything in return.

Kindness isn’t just about politeness or comfort—it involves empathy, generosity, courage, and integrity. It can include small everyday actions (like a smile or a kind word) as well as profound efforts to help, uplift, or empower others, even when it’s inconvenient or requires effort.

In essence, it’s the golden rule: treating people the way you’d like them to treat you. And recognizing that how we treat each other, how we regard each other, deeply affects our own well-being.

In our model above, a cell in our toe affects a cell on the top of our head—and we can imagine this is so because they’re under the same skin. They are a part of the same whole. In our model above, you, yourself, affect a Chinese farmer or an Australian lawyer or an Irish bureaucrat—and we can imagine this is so because we’re under the same sky. We are a part of the same whole.

But what’s the medium through which we affect each other? Our society’s interstitial fluid is kindness. Through direct action, we can be kind to those around us, in person, whether we know them or not. And we can hope that, in turn, they will turn that kindness outward, toward others outside our immediate sphere, and back toward ourselves. Through other of our channels—like voting, charity, and other forms of awareness—we can spread this effect even further.

We can visualize all of this as mutually beneficial, but in fact, kindness is its own reward. Performing acts of kindness demonstrably reduces our own stress, which improves our own health and immunity, reduces pain, and increases longevity. Treating others how we’d like to be treated increases our own happiness and self-esteem, and improves our resilience and neuroplasticity. Kindness strengthens relationships, reduces loneliness (one of our society’s greatest poisons), and creates a sense of belonging for everyone. Sending kindness rippling away from us causes improved wellness to spring up inside of us. Being kind to ourselves can positively affect the people around us and on the other side of the planet.

I began by reflecting on the empowered choice of limiting how we let the outside world affect our well-being. We can also make the empowered choice to improve the well-being of the outside world through our own thoughts and actions, and reap the resulting rewards of being kind.