The greatest wealth is health
~ Publius Vergilius Maro
Hello everyone, I had a specific topic in my mind to write about today and was wandering around through some different communities. When I came across this community, I thought: this fits perfectly! So here I go, writing my first article in 'The minimalist' community.
Recent event in my life
Recently I heard a couple of stories in my personal life which made me think about 'life'. The first event was a colleague at work who I asked how her holidays had been. She answered that they had been very bad. I was wondering how that was possible as she had quite some weeks of, so I didn't understand it at all. She started to explain that her son has had a stroke in her first week of holidays. And so she had been busy with hoping that everything would be alright. One of the most intense moments was the moment when her son, who survived but had to do a lot of rehabilitation to learn to walk again and practice especially on his fine motor skills, gave her a document which she had to sign about a statement of will. She told me that this, as a mother, was really one of the worst moments in her life. Her own son asking her to sign a statement of will. I guess I can't imagine such an event or what the impact would have been on me. What I do know is that I became suddenly very silent. So far I never really thought about such events. As I had the luck to not experience them in my close friends group. But the son of my colleague was my age, so it made me think, what if it would have happened to me? Now, several weeks later, her son is doing quite well, seen the event. He is following phisiotherapy and his motor skills are slowly improving. But they will never be the same as before..
Another recent event in my life
Last week, so more recently, I heard another story from a friend of mine. We were in the same room but involved in different conversations. I heard that the other conversation was about someone who got a certain diagnosis of a disease, but didn't really hear everything well. Later on that evening, I was talking one on one with that particular friend and apparently it was her husband who had received the diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis (MS). I couldn't believe it first. I know this friend already since we were children and I actually was with them when she met her husband the first time as well. So I already know him for several years as well. Another young person, about the same age of me who got a very severe diagnosis.
My reflections
As both these young people are kind of the same age as I am, both are younger than 30 years old, it really hit me. It made me really reflect: what if such an event happened to me? How is it possible? As a young adult, I hear often the saying: health is the most important or at New Year's eve, people are often wishing eachother: a good health. As a child, I always thought: you can have an important impact on this by maintaining an healthy lifestyle. Ofcourse we all know that you can influence your health, but not control it 100%. Was just my way of thinking as a child..
Anyway, what did I take away?
A good health IS the most important aspect you can wish someone.
You don't need all those newest clothes, a fancy car or the latest mobile phone. The most important aspect is being healthy. So, yes, in a certain way it makes me more conscious about a minimalistic lifestyle. But ont the other hand, it has a flipside of the coin as well.
Nobody is certain that a tomorrow will come.
On the other hand living in an extreme minimalistic way and you have to force yourself to do so, isn't a good idea neither. If I am only focused on living as minimalistic as I can, while having to force myself to do so, than I would be sad if tomorrow I'm getting ill and I didn't try out certain things like a specific restaurant or whatever experience.
Conclusion
As all good things in life, I think we have to live in balance. Extremes are never good, atleast in my opinion, so be happy with what you have! I think this is a very important life lesson that a lot of people should live by more.
Thanks for reading my article, feel free to interact in the comment section!
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