On Health

For obvious reasons, health has lately been a frequent topic of conversation among my family.


The generations before ours didn't think much about it. If you smoked two packs a day, drank a six pack every night and had donuts for breakfast, a burger for lunch and meat and potatoes for dinner... that was just normal.

My mom smoked and drank. My dad quit smoking a long time ago, but he drank and ate whatever he wanted.

And I lived a pretty typical Chicago lifestyle... Pizza, dogs, burgers and beer. I was a vegetarian for several years, but I smoked and drank like crazy the whole time. Yeah, that made sense.

I smoked about two packs a day for thirteen years. For a long time, it was one of my defining characteristics. I can't begin to describe how glad I am that I quit. These days, it's hard to even imagine the activity. I lit rolls of tobacco on fire and sucked on them? Just because? Bizarre.

But even so... When I left my longtime position to start my own company, now that my time is my own, I decided to devote some of it every day to repairing the damage I'd done. For years, I survived on ramen noodles and fast food dollar menus. That same small amount of money would have gotten me organic produce from the farmer's market, but I just wasn't used to living like that, so I didn't. I barely exercised. When time got tight - which was a constant situation - exercise was the first thing to go. And drinking...

It's a journey upon which I'm just now embarking, within the last couple of months. And changing a lifetime if personal and cultural habits isn't easy. But avoiding health problems is worth so much more than the fleeting pleasures of one more beer, the extra large order of nachos.

You don't have to live like a monk, eating one green pepper a day, drinking nothing but water and spending three hours a day on a tread mill. But these bodies in which our minds reside are complex organic machines, with a lot of interacting parts that easily wear out and break. The time we spend taking care of them is rewarded by time we do not spend lying in a hospital bed while our families stand around in an agony of worry.

Healthy living won't create an indestructible force field around you. Jogging every day won't stop a bullet, and eating an apple instead of fries won't prevent a genetic precondition. But why not try to prevent the things you can?

I recently had a lot of trouble with my laptop. I got a new one. Though a MacBook is well regarded for its performance, and an extended warranty protects it, I fully expect to replace it in three or four years. Until cloning technology is perfected, we don't have that luxury.