Does health = happiness?

As I walked down the drive today I reflected that there have been days in past months when doing so would have been beyond me, as daunting as climbing a mountain. At the end of my drive my little white and tabby cat Suki was high up in the branches of a tree. I stood looking up into the canopy of green leaves. The crystalline sky beyond was so blue that I could have believed it was summer if I hadn’t been wrapped up in a thick dressing gown, scarf, woollen hat, thermal socks and sheepskin lined boots against the cold! When I glanced across the road I noticed with surprise that the neighbor’s lawn looked like someone had sprinkled confectioners’ sugar over it, but very carefully so that the concreted drive was missed. Just then I realised how happy I felt. It was nice to feel happy and healthy at the same time – the two don’t always go together in my life.

This got me thinking about whether health equals happiness. I remember a friend who was diagnosed in her 30’s with an illness that will get progressively worse for the rest of her life. A woman she told about it said to her ‘You poor thing – I’ve had poor health myself, and if you haven’t got your health you’ve got nothing’. Hardly a cheering thought for someone facing a lifetime of ill health!

But it hasn’t been my experience. When my health improved after seeing my lovely naturopath she said to me ‘you must feel so happy now’. But in fact I didn’t. I felt quite low. Thinking back to the first time I’d seen her, when I’d had to lie on her couch for the consultation because walking from the car had made me too ill to sit up, I remembered how blissfully happy I’d been then. This was despite the fact that I was deeply in debt and having to sell my much-loved house. In contrast, as my health started improving my mood slipped. The two did not seem intimately linked. And recently, when I was almost housebound for 3 weeks with carbon monoxide poisoning and spent most of my time lying in bed reading and watching videos, I was happy almost every day. So in my experience it’s not true that if you haven’t got your health you’ve got nothing – I can be happy and enjoy life even when I’m not healthy.