What is health?

There is so much to becoming a healthy individual.  There is physical fitness, good nutrition, mental health, emotional health, or a term I've recently become familiar with, "emotional sobriety".  When we think of health, we often think of fitness and nutrition, but there is so much more to it than that.  Physical fitness can be explained in the 5 components of fitness: Cardiovascular endurance, Muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, and body composition (dictated mainly by nutrition).  Those are easy to understand, but how do we conceptualize mental health?  Emotional fitness/sobriety?  I think one of the biggest keys to both of the latter can be summed up in the "serenity prayer"... "...grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference".  I think that so often I waste my energy trying to control things that are out of my control.  I CANNOT control another person's behavior, feelings, or choices.  All I can control are mine.  And how difficult it can be to control my emotions.  When I remove all my crutches like alcohol, distraction (TV, friends, etc) I'm left alone with just me and my own ghosts.  The feelings and thoughts that haunt me deep down that I spend so much of my life running from.  I'm not sure who said it, but it's one of the truest things I've ever heard "no matter where you go, there you are".  You can move, you can run, you can change all your circumstances, but until you work on yourself from the inside out, you and all your pain and torment will still be there with you.  I have recently chosen to remove one of my biggest escapes... alcohol, at doing so has given me time to reflect.  Instead of numbing my feelings, I'm feeling them.  Let me tell you, sometimes it sucks, BUT, it is necessary if I ever want "emotional sobriety" or freedom from the shackles I have placed on myself.  So this blog will be my "Diary of emotional health" if you will.  When I'm thinking, and feeling, and wondering, and my mind is spinning out of control, I'll be on here, writing about it to get it out of me and into the world where it belongs.  I'll end this entry with this excerpt from the song "Breathe" by


Anna Nalick...

"...2am and I'm still awake, writing a song
If I get it all down on paper, it's no longer inside of me,
Threatening the life it belongs to
And I feel like I'm naked in front of the crowd
Cause these words are my diary, screaming out loud
And I know that you'll use them however you want to

But you can't jump the track, we're like cars on a cable,
And life's like an hourglass, glued to the table
No one can find the rewind button now
Sing it if you understand.
and breathe, just breathe
woah breathe, just breathe
oh breathe, just breathe
oh breathe, just breathe"