What could be more important than health? For a while now, the following quote has been stuck in my head:
If wealth is lost, nothing is lost; if health is lost, something is lost, if character is lost, all is lost. Billy Graham
I want to break it down into pieces.
Despite the world’s obsession with accumulating (financial) wealth and how much happiness this is supposed to bring, there is an ever-growing appreciation that wealth is not the road to happiness. We can still be happy, prosperous, and productive if we lose wealth. To quote Derek Thompson,
Wealth is a vaccine, not a performance-enhancing drug. It can prevent some misery, but it doesn’t deliver added happiness.
Above wealth for many is health. Most of us have lived our lives being told that health is above everything. If we don’t have good health, then life can be unbearable. While there is a lot of truth to it, and I am the first to subscribe to such a notion, it always felt incomplete to me. I asked myself:
Health is above everything, compared to what? For example, if one has permanently damaged the most important relationships of their lives, is health still important? What is above health that can be summarised in a few words?
And this is where the last part of the quote struck a chord with me. The word character can be interpreted in many different ways, but we all can recognize when a stance, a decision, or an approach to living is based on character. I boil it down to trying to do the right thing, especially when not doing it is easier.
