To Have Health
We cite one of Dostoevsky’s characters who was facing a fatal illness, and who had this to say concerning health: “Oh, now I don’t care, now I’ve no time to be angry,” he said, “but …how I used to dream …how I longed to be turned out into the street … to be deserted and utterly alone, without lodging, without work, without a crust of bread, without relations, without one friend in a great town, hungry, beaten … but healthy … then I would show them.”1
This poignant utterance on the priceless blessing of health suggests much that is sobering. Ill health may come, of course, through unavoidable misfortune; but it can also come, unfortunately, from neglect, indifference, indulgence, uncontrolled appetites and harmful habits, and a variety of circumstances and situations that we could have avoided - and this is the more pity, since this wondrously functioning physical body which we have been given is precious beyond price.
What fine, interacting function there is between spirit and mind and body, and all else that makes up a man! No one can fully define it, or draw sharp lines of separation, but whatever is temporal, whatever is eternal, there should be intelligent use, intelligent care toward healthy, happy, effective functioning, without cluttering mind or spirit or our physical faculties, with anything that would detract from health or impair our capacity.
We have an obligation to know the laws of health so far as we can and to live temperately – with prudence and thanksgiving, with respect and gratitude, avoiding anything that would make us less than wholesomely alive or responsibly alert. It is utter wicked unwisdom to do anything that would make us less than our healthiest and happiest.
Respect, caution, and common sense should keep us from indulging or abusing or ignoring the wondrous, finely functioning physical faculties that God has given – the only ones we will ever have within the limits of this life.
1Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot
February 13, 1972
Broadcast Number 2,212