I just completed my BCBS Health and Wellness Assessment - okay, it's not an 'A'. It's an 'A-'.

             

Here's something interesting - they say that my wellness score has decreased since my last test (a year ago) - but they don't say WHY it decreased. They didn't say that I was fatter, or under more stress, or had higher triglycerides - they just said "decreased".

Maybe they are just doing it subtly, through suggesting a course of action? They have three programs to recommend:

1) Weight Loss
2) Healthy Aging
3) Cancer-Fighting

I can see the weight-loss thing; after this motorcycle accident, I suspect that I'm carrying a good bit more fat than is healthy. I suppose that I'm like most people in this respect - but I don't wanna be! And I'm not supposed to be! - excuse me. That just burst out there. I'm all calm now - much better.

The "healthy aging" program sounds like

a) an insult, and
b) a good idea.

I don't like typing that business about it being a good idea, at all, but obviously I have some issues with aging. And, equally obviously, it's not something that I'm going to be able to avoid (and stay alive, that is. I will admit that I find it interesting that I'm in a culture that is, by and large, Judeo-Christian, but it seems to be a nearly-unanimous opinion that "old is better than dead". Do these folks simply deny a belief in an afterlife? Or do they think that fear is fun? )

 That last one - cancer-fighting. I wonder why that's in there? Is it simply a default suggestion? Or is there something that I should be worried about? I've mentioned before in these pages that my family - extended, on both sides - are nigh-on cancer free; it took my uncle Harry (the lone exception)  some sixty-odd years of chewing tobacco before he got cancer at the age of 81. The rest of 'em - not a carcinoma in the carful.

"To be or not to be - that is the question.
Whether 'tis nobler in the hearts and minds of men
To suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take up arms against a sea of troubles
And, by opposing, end them..."

I've always thought that Will was talking about acceptance vs. change - acceptance being the suffering of the slings and arrows, and change being the "take up arms against" part. I don't think that "suffer" necessarily means "endure the pain of" as much as it means "allow", as in "suffer the little children to come unto me".

I come from a spiritual discipline which teaches acceptance rather than change - that is, unless the thing that is being changed is my own outlook. So the cancer-fighting program is probably not for me, but the aging healthily program is probably a good idea.

And I reckon I orta give the weight-loss program a look see, while I'm at it.