A Stern Warning from the Muse

"The greatest wealth is health."

Virgil

"Health is like money, we never have a true idea of its value until we lose it."

Josh Billings

"Health is my expected heaven."

John Keats

I woke up this morning to find this letter from the Muse:

Dear One,

I love you and I appreciate all the work you are doing.  You are working harder than you have ever worked in your life and I appreciate it.  Still, there are some things you need to change so that our relationship can be even better.  You need to understand one key difference between us.  If you do, it will bring our relationship to yet another higher level and our time together will only be sweeter.  The difference is this:

You are physical; I am not.

What does this mean?

It means you are subject to the same laws as all physical beings.  You have limits.  You get tired and hungry.  You have a body.  God gave you this body as a gift but you’re abusing it.   You don’t eat well.  You don’t sleep well.  You don’t drink enough water.  And you don’t get enough exercise.

Let’s look at eating.  Often you eat, just to end the hunger.  That’s not the point of eating.  If it were, God wouldn’t have given you taste buds.  You are meant to enjoy food.  First the food goes in your mouth so you can enjoy the sweet, the salty, the sour and even the spicy.  Often you eat so fast, I wonder if you know there’s a difference.

Because each mortal has his or her own preference, they eat foods that have their favorite taste.   Most people eat sweets.  You eat salty foods.  Late-night large bowls of popcorn with copious amounts of butter are only hurting your heart and, in the end, may break the hearts of many if you aren’t careful.

And don’t even get me started on your sleep patterns.  I’m immortal and I’ve seen a lot, but even I’m amazed at your energy.  It seems limitless.  But it’s not.  Do you know why you struggle with fear, indecisiveness and irritability?  Because you’re tired!  This is why I don’t speak to you at night as much as I used to.  Yes we’ve had many, many wonderful late night conversations.  I gave you ideas to make your life happier and better.  I encouraged you.  But then you kept worrying that I would leave you.   It was a constant theme.  There was so much fear in you 

Honestly, if you just got more sleep, most of that would go away.

I know you like the late nights, and we can (and should) still have those occasionally, but not every night.  You know that one trait all successful people have in common is the ability to get up early.  You can’t do that if you go to bed late night after night.

So I’ve kept my distance from you at night, not because I don’t love you and not because I’m leaving you.  I keep away at night so you will go to bed.   Yes, you can get by on less sleep, but that doesn’t mean you should.  In fact, you absolutely shouldn’t.  Lack of sleep makes it hard to hear from me.

Of course, you also need to drink more water.  Your body is 75% water.  If you knew your car was low on oil, you’d take care of that immediately.  But I can’t get you to drink a bottle of water.  A big part of your fatigue is you are simply dehydrated.  This is easy to fix.  I’m a little annoyed with you about this one so I prefer not to say another word.  Okay, one more word: hydrate.

Finally, exercise.  You’ve done better on this one lately and I’m proud of you.  Now be consistent.  This is often the key to everything.  If you exercise regularly, you will want to eat better and drink more water.  You’ll also sleep better.  You don’t have to run a marathon…unless you want to.  Just get the heart beating and the blood pumping.  You’ll be glad you did.  We both will.

Trust me in all of this.   It will be a lot easier to Get Started and Keep Going if your health is good.