Perhaps Health Means Different Things to Different People

Everyone wants to live a healthy life.

That is why so many people are careful about their daily habits.

Sleep.

Exercise.

Food.

All of these are important, and there is nothing wrong with paying attention to them.

And yet, even with all that effort, people still become ill.And eventually, people still die.

Lately, through various experiences, I have been reminded of that reality very strongly.

But I have also seen the opposite.

To be honest, my father has lived for more than eighty years with almost no concern for his health.

Since his teenage years, he has smoked and drunk heavily.

Not casually — seriously.

A true chain smoker and heavy drinker.

We lived in Arashiyama, Kyoto, and Kyoto drivers were famous for being rather rough in those days.

Regulations were also much looser back then, so my father would drink almost every night and then drive himself home.

Miraculously, he never caused a single accident.

He surrendered his license at the age of sixty without any violations.

Looking back, it honestly feels like a miracle.

There were many mornings when he would ask my mother,

“How did I get home last night?”

And yet somehow, nothing terrible ever happened.

Then, two years ago, he was diagnosed with colon cancer and rushed into emergency hospitalization.

His entire colon had to be removed.

For nearly two and a half months, he survived only on IV nutrition.

He became literally skin and bones.

In that condition, he underwent major surgery.

Then, because doctors suspected intestinal leakage, he underwent a second major operation.

In the end, there was no leakage at all.

The second surgery had been unnecessary.

Even my father, who had always been physically strong, looked close to death.

One day, when I visited him alone, a nurse asked me to sign paperwork for moving him into a private room.

Apparently, no regular rooms were available.

I asked her,

“Is it okay for me to sign instead of him?”

She replied with a deeply sympathetic expression,

“Your father can no longer move his fingers…”

At that point, our entire family had already begun preparing ourselves emotionally for his death.

So when we gathered together, I quietly placed my hand on my father’s head, as I often do.

And what I felt shocked me.

An overwhelming life force.

The best way I can describe it is this:

an absolute affirmation of life itself.

I could not feel death around him at all.

So I whispered quietly to my wife,

“There’s a chance he might actually recover from this.”

And somehow, he did.

Normally, after such surgery, patients are transferred to rehabilitation hospitals.

But my father did not even qualify.

Why?

Because only two weeks later, he was already walking on his own.

He was discharged directly home.

Honestly, my father has the survival instincts of a cockroach.

When I visited him again before discharge, the same man who had previously been transported on a bed walked normally into the waiting area.

And the first thing he said was:

“Well… who would have thought I would get cancer?”

At that moment, I almost wanted to apologize on his behalf to every health-conscious person in the world.

There are people who carefully manage their health every day and still become seriously ill.

Meanwhile, my father continues smoking and drinking exactly as before.

Last year, during a family stay at a hotel with a club lounge, he drank whiskey on the rocks continuously from 5:30 in the evening until midnight.

At this point, perhaps he has simply accepted life completely — including death itself.

Of course, I am not saying health habits are meaningless.

Sleep matters.

Exercise matters.

Food matters.

But human beings cannot be explained by those things alone.

Life force.

A deep affirmation of being alive.

Or perhaps simply the irrational belief:

“I’m not going to die.”

Sometimes, things like that seem to go beyond common sense.

My father is now eighty-three years old.

His body is worn down.

He does not exercise.

And yet every single day, he still happily smokes cigarettes and drinks alcohol.

Watching someone live so completely against conventional health wisdom makes me wonder if “health” means something different for every person.