Health is wealth
Sherri T.
“Health is wealth.” These are the wise words of dear friend Betsy S. While this expression has been used by many of our mothers, in recent weeks it has assumed more significance than we could ever imagine.
Under normal circumstances, most people take their health for granted. They give highest importance to their wealth. In fact, it’s not unusual to sacrifice health in pursuit of wealth – staying up all night to finish an assignment, working extra shifts for more pay or taking on new clients even with a full schedule.
We typically see our health as a means to our wealth. We rarely see health as an end in itself.
All that has now changed. With a new threat sweeping the globe, health has become the number one pressing concern.
It should always have been this way. Unfortunately, it took a disaster to make us realize this.
My mother was always telling me: “Take care of yourself.” She would often say: “Make an investment in your health.”
Most of us don’t have time for that. Today, it seems like that’s all we have time for. In fact, there is a lot of advice going around on how to maintain good health in these challenging times.
Much of it involves things we already know. Eat well. Get enough sleep (admittedly hard to do when consumed by worry). Keep exercising (one medical officer of health recently advised going outside to get fresh air).
But these well-known ingredients for good health pale in comparison to what is on everyone’s minds right now. Their minds. Turns out, the toll that this health emergency takes on our mental health might end up being the biggest crisis of this crisis.
We are being encouraged to stay put, stay home and stay away. But social distance is not something that we naturally do.
The challenge is to stay sane in a world that has just flipped on its head. Where everything we know is now everything that is not.
My own sanity (and sanitary) plan is to write to three friends a day to ask how they’re doing. At least that kind of viral contact won’t hurt.