Why you should be healthy.

Why should you be healthy? Think of your own reasons before reading on.

Living, as I do, in a country different from the one of my birth, confronts me, daily, with new experiences and people that I would otherwise not have met. It opens my eyes, too, to ways of seeing the world that I would not have suspected. One of these ways surprised me, recently.

I was speaking to a Chinese national. I asked him what was most important to him. He said. "My health is the most important thing."

There were no surprises, there, then. I looked at him more closely. He did not seem particularly healthy to me, being young, but having receding hair.

"Why is health important to you?" I pursued, seemingly unnecessarily, but not truly so.

"Because...", he began, with some degree of intensity, "If I don't healthy, then can't smoking, can't drinking, can't go nightclub."

I nearly laughed, but for his sake I didn't. I thought it a marvellous - he wanted to be healthy enough to ruin his health. He saw health as something that allowed him to indulge in unhealthy pursuits. For him, health was like a bank account with contents to be spent while he still had it.

I didn't argue with him on the point, nor did I speak of the obvious consequences of this viewpoint: it seemed as if I would offend him, if I did. It did, however, remind me that there are always different ways of seeing the world: this was his.

I wonder if anyone else sees health as something that allows one to have unhealthy habits...do you?

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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