This week I heard that a colleague at work was seriously ill. So ill that, if he survived, his life would be forever changed. This made me reflect. I remember reading in a health magazine a quote from the director of the Mayo Clinic. He said something along the lines that one should set goals and priorities in the various areas of one’s life – family, finances, career etc. - but that ‘one should not let competing priorities get in the way of health’. Let’s repeat that:
One should not let competing priorities get in the way of health.
And then after reading it, I promptly forgot about it (almost) and put my name down to work all the extra hours God sends, in order to give more priority to my financial goals. I admit this in order to include myself in the ranks of the guilty and to underline that I do understand that it is very hard to give priority to health. Our hopes and our desires drive us all the time. We find it hard to admit that we really don’t earn enough to live the life the advertisers say we deserve… so we work harder. We work harder, to buy things we don’t really want, with money we don’t really have, to impress people we don’t really know.
Health - we so often take it for granted until it deserts us. But without it we cannot accomplish much in the other areas of our life. And we cannot fully appreciate them if we don’t have our health. And in the extreme case, we can no longer accomplish or appreciate anything at all.
When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot manifest, strength cannot fight, wealth becomes useless, and intelligence cannot be applied. Herophilus
I have been working quite a lot lately, but even quite a lot is less than what I worked last year. I actually take a couple of days off now and then. My body told me to. My body talks to me a lot more these days. I must only have the intelligence to listen.
1 comment:
You are conscious about your body. Good for you!
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