The Future of My Own Mortality
OK, so maybe the fact that Halloween is right around the corner has me looking over my shoulder for the grim reaper and how far behind me he is. But the truth is that I was watching an episode of Bob Newhart, which I have always loved, and I realized how much I loved Suzanne Pleshette. She was great as Bob's wife Emily. She was also just as great in Hitchcock's The Birds ... right up until she got pecked to death. But she was just acting. It made me wonder if she ever wondered while she was lying there how she would actually die. I know, rather morbid, but haven't you wondered? We try to do healthy things, not really knowing if they make a difference or not to our longevity. We don't really think about our quality of life, because today our quality is pretty good. I've been especially thinking about this lately because I don't have a husband, or any children. Who could I rely on if my quality of life declined? Talk about a reality check!
I think it is vitally important that we ensure our quality of life with making our own health a priority every single day. I know that it is easy to eat lunch at your desk, treat yourself to coffee cake at Starbuck's washed down with your cafe latte, forget the exercise, figure that the cheapest vitamins at the grocery store are fine. Actually you need to really get your lifestyle built around the idea of you, the healthy you. Stock your frig, carry food with you, stop the habits that you know are killing you. Think about your future. Every single minute of every single day, your body is creating cells. Are those healthy cells? Or are they mutant cells? Is your digestive system pulling in all the nutrition you need? Is your immune system healthy?
In our window at the clinic for the last two months, we have had a list of all of the things we recommend for optimal health. Every day, people stop and spend quite a long time reading and looking at all the things in the window. It has become our most popular window yet. So obviously we want to know.
And my desire to know is what makes me do what I do. Because I want to help other people to find out. To discover the underlying weaknesses in their bodies. To find out what habits are costing them time with the people they love. To find out what they can do to not just live longer, but to live fully. I want to help every single person discover what is needed every minute, every day. I want us all to live to be 100.
Suzanne Pleshette developed lung cancer in 2006 and underwent chemotherapy. She died two years later of respiratory failure. The scene I remember from The Birds with Suzanne Pleshette was a great performance. She was smoking a cigarette, which wasn't a performance. Did she wonder?