The definitions here for "normal" and "healthy" are different than definitions one learns during medical training. I do not recall much about the topic of "healthy" being addressed during training. The focus was on the absence of health or to state it more plainly, disease. Diseases were well defined by objective criteria. And when those objective criteria moved back into the normal range and the patient was feeling much better they were said to have returned to "health."

To me, that is not the same thing. So how, then, do I define 'health?" Health here is the ability to work, to love, to play and to think soundly. That means that someone with hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, bipolar disorder, cancer, etc. can be healthy. Whereas someone else without any known ailment or abnormal lab results, probably isn't. It's not about the criteria we learned in medical school. It is about how people experience the living of their lives: their jobs, their families, their friends, their gifts, their purpose, themselves and well being.

Being normal means when stressed, we often make a bad situation worse, addictions abound, workaholism is rampant, 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, financial wealth goes up but happiness doesn't, less than half of Americans are happy with their jobs, we are better at competing than collaborating, honesty is not the best policy, we repress how we really think and feel while expressing just what's safe to say and we learned to be our own worst enemies!

That may be normal, but it certainly isn't healthy!

Why wait for the near-death experience to see what we want to start doing that we haven't risked before? Why wait to start doing what is healthy for our relationships and us as well? And finally, what do we want to keep doing, albeit differently?

Open that box. It seems safe but it's a trap. You may be caught, but you have the key.