In one of those moments of existential despair I asked my father — what is the most important thing in life? I had bothered him before with questions like — why are we here, what is the meaning of life, why, why?
He had offered me enlightening answers before guided me skilfully in discovering the answers myself. So when I asked him — what is the most important thing in life, I thought there would be the lesson of self-introspection or perhaps a cliched answer like the many others which I had heard — money, success, love, power.
Health.
That is what my father said. Health is the most important thing in a person’s life. If you have health the rest of these worldly-materialistic-things you can achieve all of them. But if you are not healthy, then life becomes rather tough.
His thoughts are shared by our Prime Minister who in his Independence Day speech (Aug 15th, 2014 ) could not stress enough on the importance of cleanliness in the country. The cleaner the country the more healthier it’s children, the more productive they are, a point which has been repeatedly raised by Bill Gates. A healthier nation leads to a more productive work-force, energetic leaders and Indians who are of healthier minds.
A healthy mind rests in a healthy body. When the body is sick the mind cannot function. The mind becomes sick — it’s reasoning capabilities are compromised and more often that not it gives in to survivalist primal instincts. The result is the anarchy we see in certain sections of the Indian society.
If people were just healthier, they would be happier.
When a child falls sick the entire household comes to a halt. I remember the time a few years ago when my brother had fallen sick. My house had become so silent — disturbingly eerie. He told after he got well — I am never eating street food again. I replied — good luck trying that. But it was that day I realized a few things — of all the worries to preoccupy one’s mind, sickness and the sickness of loved one is the worst, health is something we all take granted for until we fall sick and that recovery can financially strain the ones who are not so blessed.
Prevention is better than cure, they say. They talk a lot most of the times, but this time they are right. Investing and adopting a healthier life-style is any day better than spending mind and money later. India as a nation of contrasts -the obese and the malnourished : thriving and suffering — should adopt healthier lifestyle practices in any manner possible to them. The rich should sweat it out in the gyms and stop eating all that junk food and the impoverished should just stay clean and sanitized. Probably a health revolution if undertaken by this generation will make the healthy kids of today healthier responsible cheerful adults of the large family, the large home, our large home that India is.
All the images used in this post have been taken from the very generous free-sharing-open-source-kind-of-market that we have on the world wide web. For my take on this kind of sharing, if you are interested please read — this.
Image credits and links -
1. Daddy-daughter-image — littlelds.files.wordpress
2. Narendra Modi image — img.niticentral.com
3. Bill Gates Image — rack.0.mshcdn.com
