Kay:

Hey, Hey, Questers welcome back. It’s Wednesday, May 12th. This is episode 353 and we have an Arabian proverb for you. The proverb is, “He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything.”

Shi:

You know, hope is such an overused term that often we can hear, and just kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah, as Kay and I like to say. That energy of just like, ah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kay:

I got it.

Shi:

I get hope and pardon, and then like, I get it that health is important, but there is power and depth in this quote, as you really let your mind kind of pick at it and think on it and allow it to sink in a little bit. “He who has hope has everything.” If you want everything, then hope isn’t the necessary ingredient in that. Then, “He who has health has hope. So, okay, well then how do I get hope? It’s through healthy living and not just physically eating right, but so much more than that.

Kay:

Well, the definition of health is technically the state of being free from illness or injury. Now, many of us might take that a step further and say, well, health to me means that I have the cleanest running body and the most energy and the most efficiency. But let’s just talk about the very baseline definition of health being that state of being free from illness or injury. So, I’m not sick and I’m not hurt. So, if you are free from sickness and hurt-ness.

Shi:

Hurt-itude.Hurt-ness.

Kay:

If you’re free from those two things, you have the freedom to focus on other things. Any time that your focus is up for grabs, that means that hope for your future, for your dreams, for your goals, for your success. For whatever it is that you’re hoping for, that, that now has the freedom to gather your focus and gather your attention and your energy.

Shi:

I like that. When you don’t have to focus on injury or illness you’re able to focus on other things, focus being our own ultimate power, kind of that spotlight of our minds. That we can apply our attention to and therefore help grow results and co-create on whatever it is that we put that attention on. But when we have illness or injury or, you know how it is. You stub your toe. Your whole world comes down to your toe for a minute and then it comes back. Now those who suffer from chronic illness or chronic pain, or those kinds of things really have to work at managing and navigating the waters of having to deal with something that can take that focus on a continual basis and focus on creating their dreams. So, you can see why that’s so tough to do. But when we end up hurting our health intentionally, or when we take actions or behaviors that aren’t helpful to that, I know I not only feel guilt from that, but I also don’t feel healthy from that either.

Kay:

Yeah. So, we want to protect our health and so that we can keep our hope because like the second part of this quote says, “He who has hope has everything.” We’ve seen, time and time again, in human history where humans, people get stripped down to absolutely nothing. They’re in prison or an encampment or whatever but the thing that they find that they can hold on to, the thing that keeps them going is this sense of hope no matter what. It’s the one thing that can’t get taken away from you. As long as you have time, you have the ability to experience hope within you. When you have health, when you’re not that all-consuming focused on illness or injury, you can have hope.

Kay:

So, when you have a health issue come up, that illness or injury gives you kind of these three things. It gives you this freedom from responsibility piece. I don’t have to do anything because I have an obligation to get better. That’s the second thing you have an obligation to get better and the third is freedom from the blame of anything that happened in that health situation. If you’d get a major diagnosis or you have an injury happen out of an accident. Now you have these three things come into play, but it might sound nice at first brush, but all of these things mean that your focus has to be kind of singular.

Shi:

That obligation and this was actually the topic a couple of weeks ago in my sociology class, looking at health and illness from this sociological kind of macro-perspective and the function and the role of being sick in society and what that does to us on the macro level. It’s really interesting to consider, but that this obligation to get better is one of those core components of the sick role in society because we know that hope is that fuel for the spirit, and he who has hope has everything. So, we want to maintain health as much as we can in order to maintain hope. So, just like our Arabian proverb tells us, “He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything.”

Kay:

Alrighty, gang, we’ve got a Wealthy Wellness Wednesday Quest today. We want you to get out there and do something for your health to cultivate a little bit of hope by working in at least two green foods into your diet today. Let’s be proactive about health so we can create and cultivate more hope in our life. Are you ready? Say it with us.

Kay & Shi:

Let’s quest!