Moving into February means additional minutes of daylight grow rapidly. Over the month about 80 minutes of daylight are added in this area. Along with brightening the landscape, melting snow, and boosting my mood the need for lights and reflective materials lessen. Yet, I have learned over many years of foot and bike travel that reflective material is an everyday asset.
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Road ID Reflective Strap |
It may seem counter-intuitive to think of dying healthy. However, at the time the band was purchased I was working as a healthcare chaplain. I had also worked as a hospice chaplain and treatment center chaplain. I have been in situations too numerous to count where the dying person and their loved ones were not healthy. The physical realities of stress, hydration and caloric choices, and exercise along with emotional and spiritual maladies which accumulated over the years made a pain-filled, anguished, and desolate death, even when surrounded by people.
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Early Years |
The late author, James Baldwin wrote, "To accept one's past - one's history - is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought."
My understanding of "Live & Die Healthy" is not static. Health incorporates, as well as embraces change and growth. My outlook on the external and internal aspects of my being fosters health. Daily reflections are not for others to see me, but for building a foundation that is secure in the midst of what happens around me. As Epictetus said, "Circumstances don't make the man, they only reveal him to himself." My life can be as cyclical as the daylight in the Northern Plains. However, I do not have to revert into old practices and attitudes. Healthy becomes woven in the fabric of life, past, present, and future. The deep connection with reality as it is, instead of escaping from it is what I want to reflect. It is the soil in which my foundation is laid.
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Trans South Dakota Race |
I invite you to reflect, explore, and live & die healthy!
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