Get to know your best friend: Health
Do you remember when you were a child and you asked your parents what they wanted for their birthday and they answered: “Nothing”. I still remember how I couldn’t believe this answer. How could anybody not want a present ? Upon further poking their answer used to be “health” or ” for all of us to stay healthy”.
This second answer had no more appeal to me than the first one; firstly because I could neither make it with my craft materials, nor could I buy it in the shops and secondly because it seemed equally non-inspirational.
Health ? As a child we take it for granted. As a young adult we start to realize how its absence can have devastating effects in the middle of an important project at work … so we get annoyed when we fall ill…. curse our illness as if it’s nothing but an unexpected obstacle on our path.
With more and more life experience and a few more serious health crisis’ under our belt be become more respectful towards this secret language of our body. Those fortunate enough to have become more aware, realize that the body “talks” to us through pain and other bodily symptoms. We begin to listen. This is a breakthrough. We still get our body’s messages wrong from time to time as we are perfecting our communication with each other but we are improving.
Finally, we develop a whole new relationship and we realize this body of mine is on my side. It’s not there to stop me or hold me back from my important projects. It’s there to support me, to keep me going in the long run to provide the right environment for my mind and my ideas to flourish – it’s my friend !
Through a headache it warns me that I am taking on too much today, that I should rest. Through a flu it tells me to drop it all and THINK before I pick up the many pieces again. Maybe a few pieces don’t deserve my attention anymore, maybe I am stressing about things that are not worth it when I take the time to step back and see the big picture.
Life threatening illness can alert us to much more. They shake up your life entirely. They put your life as it used to be to such an abrupt and brutal hold that your head gets knocked against the wall before you can even begin to think again.
Those lucky enough to get through it (and I will ever be grateful to have been one of them and be able to be around for my little daughter) will feel like they start a new life. Nothing will be like before. What mattered so much before, is a small matter now. Suddenly, things become so much clearer. As if for a moment the clouds disappear and you see clearly into the blue sky: you understand the few things that truly matter to you, and they are so different from what you put most of your energy to before….
Health is now everything. It’s safety. As long as we are healthy, we can think new solutions, create new paths for us and our families and get back on our feet regardless what life throws at us.
Life can take away our job, our house, our car, our little treats and luxuries… but it can’t take away our opinions, our thoughts and ideas, our experiences, capabilities and beliefs.
As long as we are healthy we can use these latter ones to build up the first one’s again.
Health is everything.
It’s not just important. It’s your safety net. It’s your friend.
Make it your best friend !
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