The Picture of Health

"The human spirit needs places where nature has not been rearranged by the hand of man."
-Author Unknown

When Spouse and I visited my relative in Tennessee earlier this month he discussed illness and health with us. We had already noted a number of curious things about his lifestyle that made us feel both humbled and determined in our own life.
He plucks vegetables and fruit from his garden when he feels the need to.
He shrugs off all stresses and tensions as well as he can and considers them a part of everyday life.
He rises at 3 AM every single day and takes a walk that encompasses a round trip of several miles before he returns and eats breakfast.
He fishes when he can, for food partly, for pleasure mostly, and he throws back the fish that he does not need for dinner.
We began then, one afternoon, to talk about what effect such attitude and routine had on his state of health. He revealed to us that, a few years ago, he suddenly had a very strange feeling in his head that he could not explain. It lingered, he said, and he became increasingly worried so he telephoned a neighbour friend of his for help and advice.
He described what he was feeling and the frightening unfamiliarity of it. His hand was clasped to his head as he clutched the telephone, talked to his friend and attempted to deal with the enormous potentiality of an imminent trip to the hospital.
After a moment's thought, his good friend had to tell him placidly that he was experiencing a headache.
"A headache?" he'd replied, astounded. "This is a headache? I've never had one. I didn't know what it was."
He is seventy seven years old and has had one single headache in all his life for which he took no medication.
He is unique, we say; this must be a rare occurrence.
It ought not to be.
The first instinct is, sadly, to wonder at the lack of headaches in an ordinary man, rather than the fact of too many people having too many headaches.
It is lamentable that we have rationalised and accepted certain things to be normal instead of ever asking 'why' and stopping to really consider why our pharmacies are saturated with myriad bottles of medicine that contain one thousand mysterious capsules lying in wait.