The Healthier I Become, The Happier I Am

It’s as simple as that. After twenty-five years of following social norms and building bad habits, breaking out of those bad habits was the best thing I ever did for myself.

When I was young I drank because that’s what people do. Guys drink beer, I’m a guy, so I drank beer, and I made sure I drank as much beer as the other guys did. But then I stopped drinking as much, and it turns out when you don’t drink alcohol you don’t get as tired. And if you wait long enough, not drinking won’t bother you any more.

When I was in my early twenties I smoked pot too, yep I did. It was fun, I was a kid, I was experimenting, but after a while it became a drag too. Pot costs money, it tires you out, it makes you lazy. Go on, keep smoking it if you like, I won’t criticize. I stopped, I’m happier. And once I waited long enough, not smoking it didn’t bother me any more.

Somehow I even started smoking or a while. For five full years I couldn’t breathe very well, but hey.. drinking was a little more fun. At the time I would say things like, “man, I just love smoking”. It wasn’t true. Now that I’ve quit for over four years I don’t miss it at all, and I’m happier. And once I waited long enough, not smoking cigarettes didn’t bother me any more.

This other weird thing happened in my twenties: I was a poor student for eight years. Turns out drinking Tropicana is pretty expensive so I started drinking water. After a while water was pretty much all I drank. I don’t get headaches, like ever. You know why? Because I’m constantly hydrated with a nearly free liquid almost every minute of my life. I save money too.

I can remember this other strange moment when I was about twenty-four. I thought.. “ok, I’m just going to chop up a pound of raw vegetables, throw them on a plate, and eat them just like that. That’s not weird is it?”. When you’re a kid you learn that eating certain things and in certain ways is normal. A little social trick the mind plays on us. I broke out of it, I eat economically, I eat efficiently, I eat as much vitamin rich food as possible. I still eat meat, but little red meat. I’m healthier, I’m happier.

Sometimes, get this, I even go out of my way to move my body instead of not moving it. I open doors instead of using the handi-cap option. I take a bus that forces me to take a longer walk to work. I walk to the store instead of taking a bus. And sometimes I even go outside just to move around a little. I don’t over-exert myself, but when my body sends signals that it wants to move, I move until the signals go away. I’m healthier because of it, and happier.

And there’s the thing. We grow up learning bad habits that have nothing to do with how the body works. We fall into addictions that we think are real. We refuse to eat vitamin-rich foods over energy-rich foods because we don’t understand the benefit. We try to move as little as possible. But what if the body is just a material, energy metabolizer with very specific needs to feel fulfilled. What if all the crap we drink, eat, consume, is moving us further away from those needs? What if we just.. figured out what they were, and met them. Would that make us more content?