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Blog: On Health. On Writing. On Life. On Everything.

The Means And The Goals

For me, the Five Health Essentials have one advantage over all the fad diets and exercise programs: The fifth Health Essential. Remember, in European Natural Medicine, there are five Health Essentials: 1. Water (note that I didn’t say: bottled) 2. Movement (note that I didn’t say: exercise) 3. Food (note that I didn’t say: superfoods) 4. Herbs (note that I didn’t say: vitamins) 5. Order. Number five – order - is the one I want to talk about today. Number one to four are only the means; number five tells you that there are goals in life beyond living for the perfect diet or the perfectly sculpted body. We live to enjoy life to the fullest: to love, to learn, to share, to explore, to nurture, to care, to create. Number five tells you that you are part of the natural order: You are born, and you will die. In between are your days and nights, which you can fill with garbage, or can fill with purpose and meaning. Nothing in nature comes in round numbers (think 80-10-10! – one of the current fad diets) and nothing in nature comes in a square (think tofu!). Natural order makes you laugh and weep, sleep and wake, work and rest. You know those over-exercised zealots – those narcissistic bores. Or those food faddists whose brains seem build from tofu with Swiss cheese holes. It is not about how you look or how many push-ups you can do (actually, being able to do one would be swell) – it is about leaving the world a better, happier, more just and more beautiful place for all its inhabitants. Order – think what it could do for you. Read More 
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