I spent the last two days hearing speech after speech about dangers. Here’s what I learned, everything leads to cancer, anything can kill you, and none of us are healthy.

I’m serious. Everything we use they say at some point it lead to cancer or death. The plastic straws at restaurants are killing the planet. Nevermind the billions of tons of other plastics. We end up eating this, or drinking it in our water, and you guessed it, it can cause cancer or infertility

To this I say BS. I’ve heard about so many things this week that are slowly killing me. It used to freak me out and I wished I could change. But now I am adopting a philosophical perspective.

A blog I follow, BeautyBeyondBones is fond of the quote “To live at all is vulnerable, because life is vulnerability.” I’ve got a news flash for the acturians out there who are figuring out all these statistics: Life is dangerous.

Life is both the most fragile thing we have and the strongest. There’es no real reason any of us should be alive if I go by what I’ve heard this week. We all live surrounded by toxic materials, and eating poorly, event he health food nuts don’t always know everything.l Why aren’t we all dead? Why aren’t we all weak and sick.

A lot of us have health problems, ,myself included at times, but nothing like what we should have if all this stuff was a deadly as they say.

The truth is, life is more than biology. That sounds sentimental, but it;s not. Ask a doctor who’s been in practice a long time, they will probably tell you that some patients do better than others for unknown reasons. Sometimes something int he person is just tenacious.

Case in point, my Grandpa has cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes, and about a hundred other serious health issues. There’s no reason he should be alive or mobile, they the man can still walk, albeit it with great difficulty. he’s close to dying, but he’s been close to it as long as I can remember. We pray for him, I think that’s all he’s living off of.

Anyone of those things can kill you, yet all of them have not yet killed him. His doctors are mind blown.

There’s no science to explain this. Sometimes life or death appears to be a foreordained thing, or a matter of willpower.

Maybe young people now are suffering more health issues because they are more depressed. Considering the teen suicide rate, have they lost their will to live?

I used to think everyone felt good all the time and only I felt sick or head-achy. Now after college term no#1, I realize that I m probably the exception. Other people deal with pain and feeling bad way more often and more intensely than I do. They just don’t complain because they consider it normal.

I got to thinking about this, and how about a hundred or two hundred years ago it seems like people didn’t deal with stress issues. And I realized, they just didn’t call it that. When I read the Anne of Green Gables series, headaches that are clearly caused by stress are spoken of as a fairly normal occurrence, frequent in some people. And other neurosis are mentioned, with humor.

In fact I think Montgomery was onto something we have missed when she treated these headaches as unimportant. To people with the right attitude, they are. People suffered then and weren’t able to drug it away as effectively as we are now, but My theory is that because they accepted it as part of life, they suffered less in a way.

Physical pain, it’s part of the human condition. It just used to be that no one was surprised by it. No one expected to escape it. Toothaches, they were normal. Headaches were common. Stomach aches were a matter of course.

Cancer, if it existed, it was just one way to die. A painful way, but there were worse.

And as for our toxic environment, I actually don’t believe we are worse off than before by much. People didn’t eat so well back then either, and they used toxic things without even knowing it, at least we take precautions.

No, ladies and gents, if we are more unhealthy now, I am beginning to think it is because of our attitude. If we have less will to live, then we will have less of a life.

I hate feeling bad, but I am not crippled by it unless I choose to be. And I find that even when I’m hurting, life is still enjoyable if I choose to focus on other things. I hope my problem will be resolved, and goodness knows,I’m not telling you to just accept suffering if you can improve your life and get rid of it.

But I am encouraging you not to sweat it over every little thing. Yes, this stuff can kill you, but you’re gonna die anyway. A short life is not a wasted one.

If you’re living in fear, trying to get as healthy in body as possible, but neglecting other things that are more important, then your health is nothing to you. And I know many people concerned with health who are sick all the time.

The skeptic may not like this theory, but sometimes I think God will cut off someone’s ability to achieve what they are obsessed with, because it’s not that important.

The Bible says the word of God and the fear of God is strength to your bones and health to your body. I feel better when I’ve read the word.

Call is psychological if you like, but the point stands. Health and life is something more than a biological equation.

You should be as healthy as you can, but avoiding health risks is impossible. I can tell you that right now. If you don’t have the industrialized ones in the Western World, you’ll have the lack of sanitation ones in the Third World. The Asian countries may eat healthier, but they have more pollution.

It doesn’t matter. Dot he best you can without being crazy, and leave it at that. Live well, and living long will either follow, or will cease to be so important. because it’s not.

Those are my thoughts for now, until next time–Natasha.