What is health, anyway? 👀 🫁🫀

A slight better definition than "you know it when you see it"

Hello, dear friends! It appears that December has arrived, which brings for me a swirl of excitement: the holidays, the whispered possibility of snow, the twinkling indoor tree and the festive songs on the piano and the piles of family time, and the promise of a new year. It feels good. It feels hopeful. It feels laced with anticipation. It feels 180 degrees from March, which is the nadir of barren winter here. What does December bring for you, I wonder? What are your favorite months and least favorite months, and how do they sit in your body?

Today, let’s talk a bit about health — What is health, anyway?

In this era, terms like “health” and “well-being” and “wellness” are tossed around as if they are self-explanatory.

But I wonder sometimes if the meaning of “health” — no, our understanding of health — morphs over time.

Our understanding of “health” can expand dramatically once we drudge through more of the landscape of health, both the peaks and the valleys.

The concept of health stretches wider than we often realize.

For most of us have, at one time or another (perhaps just this morning!) taken our good health for granted. We wake, we jump (or slog) out of bed, we go off to the bathroom, we get dressed, we dash down the stairs, we eat without another thought except that we are now out of bananas and it’s already 8:40 a.m. Our day is underway without any consideration of the complex activities our marvelous body has just performed: sleeping, breathing, sitting up, standing up, balancing, sitting down, peeing, pooping, buttoning a shirt, putting on a socks, walking down a step, opening a carton, chewing, swallowing. Not to mention seeing, tasting, and hearing! On and on and on.

Your body is such an amazing creation, such a marvel.

All of our bodies have things they can’t do, but your body is still fantastic.

Health is not simply or only or necessarily being able to run a mile in X minutes or lift Y pounds. Health can be savoring a bite of scrambled eggs and letting them slide down your throat, sipping warm tea, and watching a goldfinch land on the feeder outside as you stretch your arms. Think of all the cells that must be in coordination to do any single part of that sequence. Not all of us take such things for granted, but I dare say most of us do.

Once you have gone through the dark tunnel of uncertain health, areas of your body abruptly become revealed as the miracles they are.

I’ve felt this acutely a few times in my life. One of them was when I was 25 and was going through radiation treatment on my neck for cancer. I knew there would be side effects from cancer treatment, but I somehow did not realize — and no one mentioned to me ahead of time — that I might wake up one day without being able to talk.

It was a shock.

When I brought this up to the doctor — through pen and paper at my next appointment, I imagine, though I can’t honestly remember — I learned that yes, losing your voice was something that could happen when radiation was beamed at precious vocal chords. And no, the doctor wasn’t certain if my voice would return, but probably it would.

I would just need to wait and see.

Gulp.

As if a cancer diagnosis alone wasn’t enough to overturn my world, this was a whole new surprise to my concept of reality. No voice? Indefinitely? Permanently, maybe? What?

It was not like I was an opera singer or radio news broadcaster or baseball announcer. I didn’t sing in a chorus. But still, I had just assumed (that dangerous verb) that I would always have a voice, until I was dead and mute, even if I died from cancer sooner rather than later. In fact, it was such an assumption I had never even thought about the alternative.

I had completely taken this vast toolbox of human communication and expression for granted.

I was humbled. And mildly horrified at my decades of obliviousness.

That was more than 15 years ago, but I can still feel my sense of astonishment and terror.

Thankfully, my voice did come back, some months later, slowly. To this day, if I drink a cup of coffee or other astringent liquid, my voice can disappear for a day or two, turning into a hoarse wisp. It eventually returns, with time and coaxing and gentle liquids.

Through this experience, I was left with the conviction that the human voice is a miracle.

Imagine, imagine! Muscles in your body that emit a very complex sound that generates a code of sorts that others in your orbit can understand, a sort of audible telepathy, encoded with your mood and expectations and geographic origin and even your distinct personhood.

Extraordinary!

Let’s pause for a moment and marvel.

Wow.

Yes.

So what is health?

Here is my working definition: Optimal health is the absence of sickness and injury, and the presence of vitality and joy, and the awareness of your precarious and lucky position. It is a spectrum, not an on or off switch. We exist somewhere on the health scale at any point in time, and we slide back and forth at any given hour, day, week, month, and year.

You might have had a diagnosis, a new label of sickness, yet you have your awareness and your gratitude and your special, beating presence.

Health is a complex equation, a delicate art, a continual conversation among all your cells — the motor, the neural, the digestive, and on and on.

Can you be healthy and not realize it? Yes, as so many fortunate kids are, but I suspect that you and I and our fellow Odyssey readers want more than that: We want the awareness, the acuity, the understanding of the journey that we are on.

We want to appreciate all aspects of our health, whatever we currently have and don’t have, and also be able to cope with the transformations along the way. And we want to have empathy for others who have their own challenges on this trek and the proactive creativity to bridge or reframe health challenges, when possible.

What part of your body do you newly appreciate?

Where do you spy good health today that you did not even consider 20 minutes ago?

What working body part would you like to give a grateful nod to?

Thank you again for being here. I hope you have a beautiful day of noticing your body and its marvels today.

To our journey,
Brianne