SHAWVILLE, QUEBEC | How often do we take today as if it were going to last forever.

A pair of lovers can be overwhelmed by oceanic feelings of their private moment, while a thin man's hunger may give him the most cynical view of the world. Yet all this can change -- within a day -- the hungry man finds a job or relatives visit with a nice meal. . . and the lovers quarrel.

Everything of what we are and do is changeable, and changing. We're all getting older, case in point.

But we still think some things last forever.

Wealth, some think; health, say others. (And others have other suggestions).

It's interesting how often health and wealth are linked. "Healthy, wealthy, and wise . . ."goes a nursery rhyme; "Good health is the greatest wealth,"said multiple wise people.

It is possible to be healthy without being wealthy, but less so the other way around. At least for the period of making the wealth, good health is very important and instrumental in growing wealthy, even when earning the wealth ends up harming ones health, as is often the case.

Health and wealth have many similarities. Both require focus, determination, some brains to figure things out, and will power to bring it about. Health and wealth should be self re-enforcing, or synergistic.

Put health and wealth together and their individual powers will become magnified enormously.

"Healthy, wealthy, and wise" adds a third element, and who can object to wisdom? Or happiness? Happiness, it's said, isn't a goal but is a by-product of living. That means happiness shouldn't be a goal in life.

Right living, however that's defined, produces happiness. There are other ways to obtain it -- falling in love, receiving a great gift, achieving a goal -- but these depend on luck, whereas deciding to life rightly isn't up to luck.

We can't plan to fall love, but we can plan to execute "right living." And "right living"can only refer to actions and goals and words which feel rewarding in a principled way. We can't be pressured into being happy; it's self-contradictory and bound to collapse into pretense. Happiness is also notoriously fickle.

Forget happiness. It can only come on it's own.

There are conflicts between health and wealth. The worst is when one gains the upper hand, as in a Walmart-land when a lowest price is all that counts. A huge part of health is eating well, in moderation, in variety, and in purity. Pure food, well-eaten, is the stuff that makes our muscles -- and our brains. It should be the very best. But price of food, as of everything, can over-rule quality. Or quality will degenerate into what's only good-enough, not good (as in the Canada Food Guide, for example).

Poor eating yields poor health which yields loss of wealth. And, eventually, even wisdom and happiness. We may lose it all anyway, but why rush the loss by eating as if it doesn't matter what we put in our mouths?

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Copyright © 2009 Fred Ryan/Log Cabin Chronicles/02.09