THE FIRST WEALTH IS HEALTH

THE FIRST WEALTH IS HEALTH

The first wealth is health.  This is what the leaders of the world have forgotten.  They have also forgotten the difference between two temporal blessings – health and money.  Today money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed.  Health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied.  The result is polluted air, polluted water, junk food, crowded roads and lots of diseases some of which defy treatment.

            Festivities like Deepawali have become a curse.  They spoil the quality of YHE air to such an extent that people complain of persistent cough, chest congestion, breathing problems and irritation in the eyes.  Children have to miss schools, young people their brisk walking and jogging and the elderly their outdoor activities.  Hospitals get thronged with patients but with very little hope of quick relief recovery. Quite a few of them breathe their last.

            And all this is due to the negligence of the world leaders who succeed in occupying their highest positions by selling new dreams rather than telling them about the solving of already existing problems. Their followers get duped by the emotive and sentimental speeches they make hear with a sense of national pride. The spell of these speeches is always  transitory but it does succeed in achieving its purpose and the human life on this planet continues to remain  miserable with every apprehension of becoming more miserable.   

            God knows how long innocent human beings  will have to inhale poisonous air and drink polluted water and cut short their lives.

            One thing is obvious the  purity of this world is not the same as it was when God gave it to  man.  An English poet, perhaps William Cowper,  said: “God made the country and man made the town.”  The word country here stands for unspoiled natural phenomena.     

            Instead of further dwelling on this vital problem of public health, I would like to conclude by quoting the following lines from  William Wordsworth’s ‘Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’:

“There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The Earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it has been of yore;--

Turn wheresoe’er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.  

………….The sunshine is a glorious birth;

But yet I know, where’er I go,

That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.

                                                            --------G. R. KANWAL