Do We Actually Give a Damn?!

I cannot help but wonder if we as a general populace actually care about ourselves...

In specific, I’m referring to our health, as I see more and more people becoming ill, health declining, doctors and hospitals constantly backed up, mental health diagnoses becoming more frequent, children being diagnosed with depression, etc. I feel as though the only logical conclusion is that not enough people actually care about health.

This is evident due to the simple fact that people’s health in general, on a large scale, is not improving, it is actually declining!

I mean starting from childhood, other than a few talks about diet and exercise, is health emphasized to the point that we understand that primarily we are responsible for our own health? Not doctors or nurses, US! Are we informed that by living a particular lifestyle, we will most assuredly suffer in some way for perhaps the remaining 15–20 years of our lives, if not more?

I mean how many healthy elderly people to you really see, we’ve come to expect that we age comes a generic decline that happens to us all, mobility, eyesight, hearing, cognitive function, muscle density, skin health etc. But this has nothing to do with age, this is purely based on the lifestyle that we lived, leading up to our later years.

It’s like gaining weight, loosing flexibility and hair loss; we know for a fact that these don’t happen overnight, they are gradual processes that take place over a period of time. But we're so engaged with life’s meaningless tasks that we don’t see the changes until they are significant enough for us to notice.

Cancer is one of the biggest examples of this. There are a variety of confirmed substances and acts that contribute to the increased risk of contracting cancer, such as smoking, diet, not enough exercise, too much fast food, chemical inhalation etc. Despite knowing these things we go about our normally everyday lives, doing/not doing and using the very things that we have been forewarned will cause a substantial risk to our health and then be surprised when we fall ill!

The general mentality is mind boggling! The best treatment for any disease is to not treat it at all, but in fact prevent it! But we have become so accustomed to the idea that health care will cure what ails us or perhaps we simply don’t give a rat’s ass, that we only draw attention to our health when there is something serious enough to notice.

Interestingly there is an inherent idea that in order to be healthy is effort, when in fact this is so far from the truth it is unreal. What people are referring to in fact is correcting health is effort, that much is true. But being healthy could not be easier, but if it’s not a habit to which you are already accustomed, of course there is going to be some discipline and effort involved to change that, but the same could be said for any habit for that matter.

But we need to understand that health is not something that can simply be corrected when it goes wrong, as this seems to be the principle in which we have come to rely on. Health is an obligation and responsibility that we must all take seriously, especially given the fact that when it comes to genealogy, any shortcomings in our health will potentially impact our children!

It is time we took a deeper look at what’s important and recognized the significance our health plays in every single aspect of our daily lives, because without health, we have no basis for anything that matters!