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A Few Thoughts About Health and Happiness

© Barbara J. Mitchell

I've just returned from a solitary cross country trip by car which included visits to two elderly aunts who are both in failing health and are just about my only remaining family, a minor car accident, and other assorted adventures. In one way it was the trip from hell, but in another it was a wonderful experience. I came home with some thoughts about people and their health which I would like to share.

The happy people I visited and met along the way weren't necessarily blessed with great health. Their relationships with family and friends and their enjoyment of life had much more to do with their mental outlook. A person might have severe physical disabilities and be enduring hard changes brought about by aging, but still be cheerful and funny and someone you love to spend time with.

When I had my fender bender, I was quite upset because I was in Arizona and set to head back to my home in Pennsylvania the next morning. A woman driving a small pickup truck pulled out of a side street and hit my right front fender. It was just the last straw after a difficult time and I nearly cried when I called my husband to tell him about it. But then I went out for supper, hoping food would lessen my growing headache. My waitress and the cashier were friendly, and I had to laugh at an overheard conversation between two men who didn't seem to be playing with a full deck. By the time I left the restaurant, I was over the terrible mood I arrived with and my headache was manageable.

If ever I was to have a pounding headache, it would have been when I was driving home and listening to a strange sound coming from the damaged portion of the car. I searched in vain for the cause of the screeching noise, which sounded by the last day on the road like someone scraping a fingernail on a blackboard.

That last day had its joys to offset the annoying noise, though - an Amish farmer sitting at the corner of a field letting his magnificent team of horses rest, two calves butting heads in a pasture, lambs kicking up their heels as they learned about life, a laughing baby in a restaurant entertaining everyone around her, and the knowledge that I would be home by suppertime, back to my husband who I had missed terribly and to my beloved farm.

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