It's 2009 and already I'm annoyed.
It seems one of Livingston's two gyms is under new management, and the new and old owners took out a full-page ad in the local paper to announce it. The ad includes a letter from the former owners-- naturopathic physicians who were quite good, in my opinion, about focusing on whole-person health--as well as one from the new owner. As I don't have the ad beside me, I can't quote it directly, but I can say with confidence that one of the new owner's final sentences is something like, "Your health is one of the few things in life that you can control." Turns out the reality is worse than my memory, and not just grammatically. The sentence is, "Things have been tough all over the past year, the only one thing you have control over is your health."
Really?
That was some news to me. Probably to a lot of other folks, too.
I guess I can blame Connery's asthma on those three packs a day I didn't smoke while I was pregnant with him. Or on the smoky bars I never took him to. Or the 15 months of breastfeeding. And clearly my dad was negligent in not doing those special exercises that prevent ulcerative colitis. (Oh, wait, there aren't any.) Not to mention all those lazy bastards out there who go and get themselves cancer.
I've said it before and I'll groaningly say it again: Health. Does. Not. Equal. Morality. Health does not equal morality. Healthdoesnotequalmorality.
Are there behaviors that one can undertake to improve one's general wellbeing? Of course. Does undertaking those behaviors constitute some kind of ironclad guarantee of good health? No f'ing way. More importantly, does undertaking those behaviors make you a virtuous and moral person? Uh-uh. (Do you know which of our recent presidents has had the very best "healthy lifestyle" among his rarefied peer group? That's right--the one who legalized torture, blew up the economy, and generally left the country in the shitter. He can't control Wall Street, but he can damn well control how many times a week he works out.)
It may be that I'm extra sensitive about this at the moment, having spent much of the Christmas and New Year's holidays fretting about my father, who underwent another major surgery in early December as a result of the ulcertive colitis that perforated his colon almost three years ago and necessitated the removal of large sections of his insides, then and now. This latest surgery was grueling--how could it not be?--but he came through it like a champ, right up until he contracted MRSA. (Clearly because he was eating too much, um, MRSA fruit?) Two additional hospital stays later, he is recouping at home and trying to get back to his regular slate of healthy behaviors, habits that have included--for as long as I can remember--regular exercise, a wide variety of nutritious food, and plenty of good friends and cherished family. He controls what he can and understands better than most that some things just aren't within our sphere of influence.
Like "health" writ large. Until we can choose our parents and their parents and so on down the line, and until we can know what kind of effects the chemicals and other toxins in our air, soil, and water have on our health, and until we can ascertain what really causes complex conditions like cancer and diabetes and asthma, we can't control our health. No one can. And to imply--hell, to flat out say, like this guy did in his ad--that a gym membership is going to be the ticket to immortality is more than just annoying. It's wrong.