Putting the Health in Unhealthy

Health seems to be a touchy subject lately. It may be due to the fact that the term itself has become so subjective. I am not a big fan of our current cultural leaning towards the blanket belief that absolutely everything under the sun is subjective. One person's "right" is not another person's "right", always, period.

I don't buy it.

We are all subjected to certain rules, reality that applies to everyone whether they want to believe it or not. I won't get into how I feel that truth applies to morals or "worse" religion... but at the most basic fundamental level you cannot deny that things like gravity and our need for oxygen and water are not subjective.

They are also not controversial. And so we disregard them. They don't help us justify the stance to which we have already emotionally committed ourselves, in any number of different topics.

Health is controversial my friends. At least in our modern world where obesity has become an epidemic and yet  body acceptance is at an all time low. Bullying, peer pressure and name-calling have morphed and replicated into a word-spewing pandemic that is eating away at the hearts and souls of not only our nation's young girls but girls and boys alike. Adults. Men as well as women. It's hard to have an honest discussion about health without going too far in any number of different directions... taking the conversation itself to an unhealthy place.

If we're unhealthy we tend to have unhealthy reasons and excuses that lead us to become that way.
If we are healthy, we are likely doing it for unhealthy reasons.

It's off limits to voice concerns for those we know who's level of dysfunction in their physical health is affecting their happiness and sense of well being in other areas of their life, a life we care about. One we desperately do not want to see shortened. But it is somehow ok to mock "fat" people on TV, in the hallways of school or work, behind their backs and oftentimes to their faces?

Being unhealthy gets backlash. Internal and external. Attempting to get healthy gets backlash. Because we're all just so. darn. defensive. And correct me if I'm wrong but the commentary has gotten out of hand.

Things I've read in the past 24hrs on health blogs:

• "I want to be skinny so that I can find a boyfriend who will love me for who I really am"
• "She must be starving herself"
• "Everything in moderation" (As an argument against removing junk from one's diet... when really it means I don't ever plan on giving up my Cheetos and as long as I believe what I'm saying then I won't feel like I have to.)

Doing the right thing for the wrong reason. Doing the wrong thing because it feels right. We sense that the people we see around us swimming against the current may have vain reasons for doing what they do and so we automatically discount their efforts... and their results. At the same time we have those same desires ourselves. I know I do.

It seems to me that our thoughts on health are rather unhealthy. Don't you think?

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