Health: Daily and Crucial

Today I am grateful for good overall health and I appreciate the life experience that helps me know what regular endeavors will maintain wellness.

So often when we hear most about how important our health is to us are times when someone has lost their health in one way or another. There is the tragic finality of a college student dying by suicide, and the tired cancer patient post-treatment. There is the family member fading into dementia, or losing to COPD. 

There are the overuse injuries of young and old athletes, the depression and anxiety of so many heightened by COVID-19 circumstances. There are those feeling ill following vaccination and those left with the soul sickness of grief and waning faith and hope. 

Before the pandemic arrived, we were already hearing about epidemics of obesity, opioid addiction, screen time taking over from outdoor time. Our health report as a nation and a world does have some low marks.  

I can sit in despair of all of this concerning news, or I can motivate myself to act. Others certainly serve as guides and inspirations to me. If my actions impact and motivate others, more good energy builds. A network of support and accountability is a good form of health insurance. 

Our health is physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual in nature. I believe these are all interconnected and illness or injury to one sooner of later impacts all areas. Daily endeavors make a difference.  Not just a difference. They are crucial to how my day goes, crucial to our collective well-being.

Eat a little less. Eat food closer to its natural state. Walk a little further. Sit in shorter stints. Focus fully on the in and out breath for a few moments. Arrive back at your own sense of being. Go outside. Look up, look down, be in awe of the bigger whole in which we exist and belong.

Daily and crucial. Take care. Some of human health is left to genetics and chance, but there is much of it left to you and I as well. Choose healthy options and actions. Even if if is just one more than the day before. There is no greater blessing than health, and no greater loss when it is threatened.