BALANCE

Grey River Argus, 5 September 1934, Page 8

BALANCE

BY A MEDICAL AUTHORITY. (Under the Auspices of the Sunlight League.) The Sunlight. League stands for a healthier New Zealand and the betterment of the race. With these aims we must all sympathise, for New Zealand could be healthier and the race could be improved; the percentage of recruits rejected during the Great War is a sign that things cannot be taken with complacence. It may be worta while to consider what we mean by health; everyone knows that it literally means soundness, wholeness, and that is not the meaning we imply when we use the word. Rather we tend to mean freedom from disease; this latter is a negative conception, I prefer something nearer the meaning of wholeness, where all aspects and and functions of life are taken into consideration. It is not hard to agree that health implies the wholesome possession and use of all our faculties bodily and mental; further it implies a harmony, a balance; to go a little further we must agree on some standard by which we may test the degree of health. Health surely consists in a state of body and mind which enables the individual freely to pursue his appointed end. Health is not the end, hut the means to an end. What is that end? Omitting theological or metaphysical arguments we shall, most of us, agree that man’s true end is to express himself as an individual, and to serve the community; in this expression and this service there is room for all his nobler aspirations. Only a healthy man can adequately do these things, a man of healthy mind and healthy body; none of us enjoy absolute health, all of us are handicapped by infirmity of some kind or we would be more than mortal men. but it should be our aim, as it is of the Sunlight League, to assist in securing the greatest measure of health possible for all our people. Now individual expression and service to the community may he or may appear to be, opposed. Actually there is always some considerable conflict, what we must reach is a state of harmony, a balance. So too when we acknowledge that both body and mind are necessary, we must observe a true balance here. The man with enormous muscles and no brains is not of so much use as one more harmoniously developed; the intellectual genius crippled with bodily disease is thereby a less valuable member of the community, though many men of genius have made inestimable contributions to mankind in spite of their bodily weakness.

The man who is always worrying about his health is not healthy but in a morbid state, even if his body he in perfect order. Many of the good things of this life we enjoy, as it were unconsciously, and health is one of them; we. hardly think of our teeth until they ache, so with health, we should not be preoccupied with it until it troubles us. But we must not misunderstand this point; wc all take reasonable care of our teeth, we clean them, we keep them exercised on a wholesome diet, we go occasionally to the dentist; but we are not always thinking of our teeth. As regards health, we must obey certain wise rules; we should see that our diet is reasonably wisely chosen, that we have adequate fresh air and sunlight, physical and mental exercise, etc. Tint if we concentrate on our health beyond this stage we are apt to miss the point of our life, and fail to achieve our end of individual expression and service to the communi tv. Our individual expression is liable to he that of selfabsorption in the problems of our personal health, which is not far removed from hypochondriasis. We shall have no time for service to the community.

There is an old Greek proverb.— “Nothing in excess,” observe a due proportion in all things; so let ns observe a balance in health as well as in life. Our development and training to he harmonious must include training of the mind as well as the body, and by training the mind we should not merely think of the intellect, but of our emotions as well, for the ordered and harmonious expression of our emotions is as necessary to our health as bodily well-being. On the physical side we should enjoy Ihe. sun, for in a very real sense we are the children of the sun, frosh air and exercise, bathing, games, a wise diet, proper sleep, for these are all valuable and some of them essential in promoting, health. But we should try to enjoy them spontaneously and for their own value rather than with a conscious striving for health. Let them fake their proper place in our scheme of things, and let us also remember the things of the mind, our intellectual and emotional life. is, let us observe a proper balance. This is not the place to begin a discussion concerning psychological health, but it may be appropriate to make some observations concerning children; the health and development, of children is the concern and responsibility of adults. We are waking up, slowlv perhaps, to the realisation that children need sunlight, fresh air and a wholesome diet; and are beginning to take a wiser view, in regard to their physical well-being. But we are slow to accept our full responsibility in connection with the growing mind of the child. T do not mean the child’s intellectual development, though our educational system is by no means without fault in this highly important direction; J mean the care and development of his emotional life. The object of education, apart from information leaching and such religious and moral instruction as may be decided, should bo to turn out each child a happy independent individual, healthy in body and mind, already learning to express himself and to control his emotions, and to take his place in serving the community; in this training the home is more influential than the school, and we must all learn to be able to play a wise part in it. Books will tell us something, but little more than a book on painting will tell us

how to be artists. No training in self-control will be any good if we fail to control ourselves; for children learn far more by example than by precept, and if we mishandle our emotions our children are likely to do the same. Warps or twists of the emotional life of the child mean warps and twists of his character and probably an unhappy or ineffective life; there are far too many tragedies of this kind in our midst. This may be criticised as a digression as it certainly is, but its object is to stress a side of life too often ignored. If we observe the bal-

ance in education as in life, we shall pay due regard to the intellectual and emotional .as well as the physical side. Let us then try to obtain this har mony and balance; let us observe wise rules of health both of mind and body; let us not forget that health is not an end in itself but is a condition in which we arc able to live our lives as free individuals and to serve our fellows, and, in so doing, we can, within the limits of this mortal life, experience both joy and happiness. Readers of Plato’s Republic, will remember that after long search Socrates found justice under his very feet; it was that each individual should perform his due function in the state. Tn this ideal states there were wise governors who decided what was to be done. So in that psycho-physical complex, which we call man, health may be compared to a State, where all our mental and physical functions, all our thoughts and emotions smoothly and harmoniously carry on their work, subordinate to the directing force of our personality expressed as the will. Like Tylty] in Maeterlinck’s play, we may find an excessive desire to grasp the blue bird of health may make it fly away, but like Socrates and his friends we often fail to see health when it is obvious.