The Health Priority

Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.

- John F. Kennedy

Everyone knows the importance of good health. Billions of dollars are spent every year on this issue. It is the source of controversy and protest but it is also an issue that, in our personal lives, consistently gets put on the backburner.

I am just as guilty as everyone else. I can go weeks without exercising if things get busy at school or at work. I think that most people do the same. For example, how many of us would miss studying for a test to go for our daily jog?

The interesting thing is that, in a sense, health is the be-all and end-all for us as humans. If we didn’t have health, we know that work, school and leisure wouldn’t matter at all because we wouldn’t be here to experience it.

So my question is “Why is such an important issue not important to us?”

I think the answer illustrates a key problem in our culture. That is that we are a society that is ‘instant result based’. We value the things that we can get immediately. This would explain why fast-food, the internet and casinos are so incredibly popular. They offer instant satisfaction – or so we think. Consequently, things that don’t offer immediate visible results are placed as a lower priority.

The evidence is all around us: hospitals are overcrowded, heart disease is the number one killer of adults and child obesity is at an all-time high. Until our culture begins to value the unseen and see beyond instant gratification, health will not become a priority until it is too late.