Good health – a necessity and duty

“The art of life is the avoiding of pain.” – Thomas Jefferson

If you have some health problem – disease, you are the only sufferer and none other. Even the closest ones are not the sufferers. They can help you with their time, money and services. They may even shed tears because they are attached to you both sentimentally and sympathetically and they are the only ones who are most sorry for you when you are sick in the bed. But, “Only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches,” we know. Pain, the actual suffering is born by you and you alone. Nobody else can share that agony. This is why William Douglas has said, “The only soul a man must save is his own.”

It is not the quantity of days we live which is important as it is decided from the Above, but the quality of days we live as it is within our control to a great-great extent if we take it as our necessity and duty, as says Alexis Carrel, “What matters is not to add years to your life but to add life to your years.” Interestingly, if we don’t add life to our years, we cannot even think of adding years to our life.

To have good health is our necessity as well as right and to know how, is the duty. How can we claim for the right unless we discharge the duty? In this respect, who can rebuke us as harshly as Leonardo Da Vinci, “He who does not value life does not deserve it.” It must by repeated, “He who does not value life does not deserve it.”