What
does it mean to be healthy? Is it a number on the scale, blood pressure
score, jeans size, a body free of disease, or something else?
Health
can be a touchy subject. We fight over what it should look like (Dove
ad or Victoria's Secret model). We fight over what size dress is healthy
(16, 8, or 2). We bash and judge all who don't fit into our ideal. We
forgot to factor in the most important ingredient. What does it feel
like to be healthy? What does that look like?
Living
healthy involves a mix of physical, mental, and emotional components
that make us who we are. We literally create our bodies from the inside
out with what we put in, what we think, and what we do. Regardless of
what we think picture-pefect health looks like, there is one thing we
all have in common when it comes to health: Everyone wants to feel
better.
Wouldn't the forest be boring if all
the trees looked exactly alike? Why do we get so hung up, then, on how
people look and what is healthy and what is not? Sure, we can agree that
obesity is unhealthy. We can agree that eating junk and lazing around
for days on end isn't healthy. We can even agree that living with high
stress leads to physical, mental, and emotional demise. Why is it, then,
that we either want everyone to fit into the Victoria Secret or the
Dove category? Why is it one or the other? Why are we so superficial
when it comes to the most internal of all topics?
Our
health begins in our insides and doesn't stop at our skin. Our health
(healthy or not) radiates beyond our skin into the world in the form of
our actions. How we live not only affects our body, mind, and spirit,
but also affects the body, mind, and spirit of everyone we encounter,
and (soon to be commonly accepted), on an entangled mind level.