Health Is…

We get awfully attached to being healthy. We even expect the earth to stay healthy, with that expectation fueling the environmental movement. "The earth will last forever if we take better care of it," they seem to say. Yet we know the universe is winding down and that our sun will someday burn out and go dark. These cosmic events are so comfortably distant we don't see the immediacy of it. But I have to admit I have always thought of health and death as opposites. Fact is, health and death define each other.

For years I have read much about Buddhism, primarily Zen and Tibetan Buddhism and Vipassana meditation. I have also spent a fair amount of time meditating, though not nearly enough to learn what I need to learn to understand impermanence, but I have worried the edges of my attachments.

Now, I regard myself as a much more healthy-minded person than my parents were, especially in the area of exercise. At my age, my Father had bad knees and usually came home, sat down and read the paper. He rarely moved from that chair. At this time of year, we recall how he spent each New Year's Day glued to the television, watching football. He was rarely physically active. My Mom was much the same, keeping watch on him. She was all about healthy eating, but not exercise. I eat healthier than my father did, and I exercise roughly five hours a week. I note my life expectancy is longer than my father's, but now I have to face the truth that health is merely a slower means of dying. I think the statement has some irony to it. We expect health to be the means to outwit death, but we know in our hearts there really is no escaping it. But still, the older we get the more we pursue good health as hard as we can.

As parents, we have assumed our thirty-something son will become more health conscious when he gets a little older, more mature, wiser, etc. We tell ourselves it's maturity. If he will only get a little more mature, he'll take better care of himself. I wondered why we seem to become more health-conscious as we get older. Not hard to figure, is it? We are watching death approach, so we are getting attentive to our health. Not so we can feel better, or live forever, we just want to slow the rate of dying. The Dalai Lama marvels at us humans who make plans and prepare for everything, but get squeamish about being always prepared for death. It's not attributed to him, but I am sure he'd agree, "Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which you can die." So, health is a rate at which death happens. There is no denying it, but how will you live your life differently once you really wrap your mind around it? It means more than trying to be healthier, doesn't it?