On Health

Let me recommend to you, dear reader, this article, "Health Now: A Provocation." Mark Edmundson, an English professor, writes about people who live for good health, "But on some level one senses ... that what the man or woman oriented to health most wants to do is to live forever." Edmundson connects this to man's attempt, throughout history, to achieve immortality. He notes that an obsession with life has replaced a concern with moral action. He writes,

Why do mortals now wish to live forever? ... It looks to me as though health and well-being are now simply ends in themselves. We want to go on living in order to go on living, and not for much more. ...

Health should manifest itself as a means to an end. We want to be healthy so we can get something practical done—or better still, something divine, something celestial. But now, since we do not know what we are doing here, do not know what we want or need, health has become an end in itself. People pursue health for its own sake. ... With the disappearance of tenable ideals, life, simple life, has become the great goal.

Amazingly, the article does not refer to my least favorite Parks and Recreation character (that right, I like him less than the rest of the characters like Jerry), Chris Traeger (Rob Lowe). Chris Traeger is the perfect comic depiction of this heath-obsessed character. He takes vitamins, goes for 10-mile runs, does sit-ups and push-ups at the office, tells us that he's going to be the first person to live for 150 years, and breaks down emotionally when Lil' Sebastian, the miniature horse, dies because it reminds him of his own mortality.

The best line in the article, comes in an imagined debate between a fat person and a skinny one:

At least you'll feel better, says the well-conditioned skinny. On the contrary, comes the reply, the bursts of pleasure that food and drink reliably deliver far exceed the meager little hum of satisfaction that comes from being "in shape." Ask Falstaff.

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