Why Does the News Report the President’s Annual Physical?

I remember the first time, as a young adult, when I realized that the Whitehouse shared President Clinton’s physical examination results.  It was the first time that I came to the realization that the President’s health was a national security concern.  Just recently, at the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency, his doctor came forward and reported to us that he was in robust health.  The question is why?

On Friday, November 23, 1963, we lost one of the greatest Presidents of the United States of America.  He didn’t die because of health complications he was assassinated.  Why do I bring him up, if we were just talking about health?  Because his life was cut short.  And because his life was cut short, John F. Kennedy couldn’t complete the vision that he had for this great country.  The vision that he reiterated during his run for the presidency is what got him voted in.  It was the vision that the American people wanted to come into fruition at that time.  As a matter of fact, because he passed away so young, his son couldn’t even get his father’s training because his life was so brief.

 

Well, I’ve grown to learn that every President’s annual examination is important and that if it was revealed that there was a problem, the economy could be impacted. Why?  Because the American people, companies, and outside interests could get scared.   It would be impacted because if he physically passes away, his vision for the country might not come to pass.  Sure there is a Vice President, but we really don’t know this person’s vision.  Are you aware that President Kennedy desired to remove the country from Vietnam earlier?  He died and the next President saw otherwise.  If he wasn’t assassinated, imagine how many people would have never gone to Vietnam?  That’s an example of the power of living long enough to fulfill your vision.

 

No Matter How Much Money

 

In the ’90s, I was in a multi-level marketing business.  I learned a profound aspect of wisdom one day from one of the wealthiest men in the country at that time.  As he was on stage talking, he gave advice that forever changed the people in the room that day.  What did he say?  He said:

 

“No matter how much money you have in this world.  If your health ain’t right, it doesn’t mean a damn thing.  You can never really enjoy life if your health is bad.”

 

I heard it and remembered it, but it wouldn’t make complete sense until years later.  It probably didn’t impact me at that time probably because I was only nineteen or twenty years old.  And being young and not having any health issues, I couldn’t relate.  The man that said this was suffering from heart problems and he was morbidly obese.  

 

Hell, one of the founders of this company was a billionaire at the time and already had a heart transplant.  I believe he needed another heart transplant at the time as well.  He was a billionaire but was living on borrowed time. Why did he want another heart, if he was already in his late 60s to early 70s?  Because being a billionaire, he probably didn’t have any issues in life except for his health.  In other words, he lived in paradise and wasn’t trying to leave this Earth any time soon.  

 

My First Priority

Approximately, 10 years later on August 23, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.  This category 5 hurricane-impacted New Orleans so much that I’m still meeting people who forever left New Orleans and relocated all over the East coast.  Their families had been there for generations going as far back as the 1800s and even the 1700s.  That hurricane destroyed everything they ever had and they had to restart their lives again.  Hell, many of the famous rap stars moved to Miami or Atlanta and never looked back either!  

 

So many people died because of that hurricane.  People were on the tops of their roofs waiting on help for days.  Some people died in their homes due to drowning.  Some people made some types of boats so that they could get around and help each other.   It was a bad time in New Orleans.   Hell, even one of the largest alligators washed up in one of the towns.  It was so old that they found a bullet in him that came from the civil war era! That made him over 138 years old! He lived so deep in the swamps that nobody knew that he was there.  So he was never bothered or killed. But I digress.  

 

But that year, what was said by that multimillionaire at that meeting approximately 10 years prior, finally all made sense to me. 

 

During this time, I was working with a good friend of mine.  He’s type 1 diabetic (he was diagnosed with diabetes at around 11 or 12 years of age).  Watching people on the news, attempting to survive during this horrific time period, I asked my friend/coworker that if he lived in that area, what would be his first priority?  He said:

 

“Moeh, if I was in that predicament, my first priority would be to make some type of boat so that I can get around.  Then I’d try to break into a CVS or some type of pharmacy. I’d do this because I need insulin.  And if I can’t get it soon, I won’t be alive long.  I need insulin.”

 

This is when what that multimillionaire told us that day, all made sense.  Let me go further.

 

Life Happened

 

There was this fellow in my agency.  He was a contractor such as myself but in a different department.  He was a nice guy.  He was probably in his early 50’s.  He was a nice guy, but his lifestyle habits were horrendous.

 

This guy took double-digit smoke breaks every day for the couple of years that I knew him in passing.   He ate junk food every day of the week.  His lunch breaks consisted of fries, hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizzas.  He’d talk about the liquor and beer he’d drink in the evening time when he’d get off.  He was also obese.  And on weekends, he’d hit the clubs and party from Friday to Sunday.  And every Monday he and some of my colleagues would talk about their crazy weekends.  

 

He loved women, and because of the charm he had, he always had women around him.  Then one weekend, an employee that he grew up with informed us that he had a stroke.  Luckily, because his friends noticed it so quickly and called the ambulance, it saved his life.  

 

He was gone for three months and came back.  He was not the same man anymore. The left side of his body was impacted by the stroke.   It took him 10 minutes to even walk through the lobby.  The man was still in that body but the shell was broken.  

 

He was a charming fellow that was always around women so much that, I didn’t even know that he had a wife.  After the stroke, the women and friends disappeared.  While he was out attempting to recover, his wife had to take on an extra job to help the family.  He attempted to come back but after three months he was forced to retire.  He physically couldn’t come back to work.  The stroke had taken so much from him.  I pray that he’ll eventually recover and not fall into a depression.  

 

Can We Survive the Bad Times?

 

Some time during that same year as the hurricane, I was in a health food store near my house.  Someone handed me a pamphlet and a tape cassette to listen to concerning health.  On that cassette, the speaker said:

 

“If you don’t take care of your health, you can cause enough damage to your body that you’ll be forced to need medication to stay alive.  Now in a modern world like America, this is not a problem.  The problem is that when there is a calamity like Hurricane Katrina, people like yourself are the first ones to go, if you can’t get your medicine immediately or your health treatments like dialysis.  So you cannot destroy your body if you desire to survive even during bad times.”

 

Foundation

 

As men, we really don’t realize our position in society and our families.  Biblically speaking, God built humanity by creating man first.  No one has ever asked the reason, why did God create Adam first.  The reason that Adam was built first was that he was made to be the foundation of humanity.  

 

Foundation?  Yes.  What is a foundation?  Well, when you first decide to build an edifice, your first step should be to create a blueprint to decide on what you want.  Once you’ve written out the blueprint, then you begin by building the most important part of the edifice the foundation.  The foundation is important because this is what the rest of the house will sit on.  They calculate the weight of the house and the number of people that will occupy the edifice and based on that they determine the amount of weight that the foundation will have to carry.  If they miscalculate this, the foundation over time can crack or begin to tilt, and eventually the house will fall. 

 

That is the purpose of the foundation.  Foundation carries the weight of the house and because it’s so important, usually when creating these large buildings, it may take a long time to build the foundation.  In the Washington, D.C area I’ve seen foundations take almost a year to build.  And then as soon as they build the foundation, the building goes up pretty quickly.  We’ll get deeper into the science of foundation building another time.  

 

Now that you have a basic understanding of the purpose of foundations on a physical level let’s explore foundations on the spiritual level. Man is that foundation for all of humanity!  So when God decided to build humanity, God had to start with first things first-A Foundation!  And if that foundation falters, all of humanity will fall.

 

So, the vision that every man has is important not just to him, it is important to his family and humanity.  And his life is important to his vision and to his family.  And if he doesn’t fulfill his vision in this life due to his carelessness or his habits, his vision cannot be fulfilled and the lack of presence in his household will weaken his family because the foundation is gone.  

 

So you are the foundation of humanity, your country, your society, and your family.  And if you are removed from that equation, humanity, your country, your society, and your family will fall because the foundation has failed to fulfill its assignment to carry the weight!

 

You Are at Fault

 

Do you know that a lot of diseases are caused by our diets and lifestyle choices?  Do you know that even cancer is largely due to our dietary and lifestyle choices?  We men get a lot of the following diseases more often:

  • Cancers (oral cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer, skin cancer, etc.) 
  • Diabetes
  • Heart Disease
  • Strokes 
  • Aneurysm 
  • Gout
  • Obesity
  • Kidney failure
  • Liver failure
  • Etc.

 

A lot of these diseases we cause because of our lifestyle choices.  In fact, it is even known that married men live longer than single men.  And I suspect it’s because our wives control our eating habits!  Many of us wouldn’t eat a plant, if it wasn’t for our wives making us eat it.  We wouldn’t drink water or even take supplements if it weren’t for our wives.

 

If many of us men had our way, we’d eat fried foods every day, have beers for breakfast, barbecue every day, drink hard liquor every day, and eat unhealthy food every day.  When I was younger, I literally saw adult single men die quicker because all they ate was bullshit.  

 

When you die young because of your health habits, you impact your family in ways you can’t even believe.  First off, your wife now has to do your job and her job too.  She has to become the foundation that you were.  A lot of her nurturing will disappear because she has to take on some masculine characteristics in order to survive. She now has the stress of being the disciplinarian.  She may have to take on another job, which also means she’ll miss some of the children’s activities now.  Because you died prematurely because of some of your habits.   

Your sons will first off get impacted because there won’t be anyone to finish teaching them about manhood.  He also may have to help his mother take care of the children.  I’ve seen some young guys drop out of school to help their mothers.  Furthermore, because no man is home, he can get a little out of control and at a certain age, the mother won’t be able to deal with him.  Many women have sent their sons to their father’s house at a certain age because he was getting out of control.  This is natural.  But a man knows how to deal with a teenager that’s smelling himself.  Dying early also can disrupt that male child’s psychological peace.  His whole house is now upside down.  There’s no one to protect the home.  I’ve literally seen male children unable to recover from that loss.  

To your daughter, you’re the first man that she’s ever loved.  She sees how a man is supposed to treat a woman and take care of a woman by watching your interaction with her mother.  She sees how a man’s supposed to conduct himself by watching you.  Even the proper value of herself comes from you.  If she doesn’t get that fatherly love from you, then she will go into the world looking for it.  That’s how loose daughters are created we (fathers) tend to create them due to us not being there or not giving them the time and attention they deserve.  Now imagine if you leave this life early?  And if you’re not there, who will protect your daughters from molesters and pedophiles?  Who will protect them from men period?  When strong men are present, males who wish to abuse women, stay away because they know that strong men are present to deal with them.  Imagine what that psychologically does to your daughter if you pass away early?  .

 

Conclusion

 

We are the leaders and the foundation of our household.  We determine the direction of our families. If we don’t want generations of health issues in our families, it is our responsibility to learn about health and lead our family in that direction.  But it starts with us.  We determine the culture of the family.  Is it going to be a healthy culture in our family?  Then it starts with us.  First, it comes with the knowledge you will find that knowledge here.  Then it’s up to you to start the new habits.    We teach and lead by example.  Let’s guide our family to better health.  And let us prolong our lives by taking better care of ourselves.  Why?  Because our mission and our family need us to be here for a long time.