We admire tigers and wolves, and many other wild creatures, no doubt because they are fully who they are – no more, and no less. A tiger is completely a tiger, as is the wolf, and virtually all the other animals, birds and fishes on this planet. The only ones who are not are those who are interfered with in some way by human beings. It is we human beings who inhibit some of this planet’s inhabitants from being fully who they are, by restricting their lives and preventing them from being whole and living fully. Another way of saying this is that it is human interference that stops them from being fully healthy. With only two exceptions, all the creatures on the planet are in perfect health, primarily, I believe, because they are utterly true to their own nature and because they live life to the full. The two exceptions to this are us, and creatures restricted or exploited by us. In stark contrast to the vast majority of creatures who are in perfect health, billions of human beings are in less than perfect health. I believe that a major cause of this is that they are not true to who they are and do not live life to the full.  Indeed, I am beginning to suspect that there may be a highly significant correlation between not being true to oneself, on the one hand, and one’s level of ill health, on the other.

It is significant, I think, that when we talk about “tiger nature” and “human nature”, the word “nature” seems to mean two very different things. In the case of the tiger, it conjures up “perfection” and “natural intelligence”. In our own case, the term is often used to imply “imperfection” and even “casually stupid”, as if it is human nature to be imperfect, weak, and less than intelligent. In this paper I will argue that if we are really serious about wanting to get rid of illness and about wanting to be fully healthy, in all senses of the word, we first have to become fully human – to be true to who we really are, and live life naturally, to the full. In other words, we have to find, and live, the human equivalent of “tigerness” and “wolfness”.