Did you know that we can take charge of our health? I myself had not realized this. I had thought that health was a force that mostly percolated along on its own, trickling like a stream through the woods of life and emptying, someday, into the sea of death. I had thought that the joys of health—strength, sensuality, sports—naturally kept us rolling along; if not, we met with rocky pangs of dissipation.
That was primitive of me. The river of our being does not glide at its own will. We govern its flow, in two ways.
First, we can maximize our health. This effort, called a “health journey,” may start with a visit to a health-service website. Mine offers “all the resources you need to lead an informed and healthy life.” Such resources cost you nothing and come from venerable institutions such as the Mayo Clinic and Harvard Medical School.
Their researchers can tell us how fast to walk, when to sit or stand, when to dwell in the light and when in the darkness, what technology to use in order to breathe while we’re asleep, how to cope with toxins that others can inject in us without even touching us, and how to set aside time for kindness, forgiveness, spirituality, and gratitude, which have proven health benefits and are therefore worthwhile.
I had thought it was foolish, as Horace says, to “attempt Babylonian calculations” and try to game what one cannot control, that it was nobler to face “whatever will be” and to “seize each day.” To maximize our health, however, we have to be mindful of every mouthful, each minute of sloth and jolt of stress. It’s not enough to go to bed at bedtime; the number of hours of “restorative sleep” is what makes or breaks us.
But how can we track our progress on so many fronts? Didn’t Mrs. Centipede stumble when asked how she walked with all her legs?