A philosophical question...

A number of situations have come up lately and have me coming back over and over to the same question.

The question is, what exactly do we owe to other people, especially where our health is concerned?

What I mean is, it is very common for people to have opinions about how others should live their lives. What we should be "allowed" to eat, what we should be "allowed" to do or not do that might by some estimations be "bad for us".

Fat people are often scolded publicly for eating "bad" foods.
(Yeah, believe it or not, it's pretty common!) Pizza, ice cream, chips...all foods that are OK for thin people, but let a fat person indulge in public and the scolding food police start in.

But it's not just a fat issue. It's also the elderly.

My friend John loves to run. He has done so every day for, oh, sixty years or something. Running is a big part of how John sees himself.

About 18 months ago, he started toppling over while he was running and he has, several times, done himself serious injuries in his falls. Now the hospital is pressuring John's son, Bill, to put John in assisted living so that he can be prevented from hurting himself.

I certainly understand that instinct to protect him. Really, I do. Especially for strangers who see him persisting in running though he's 80 years old and has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's and he hurts himself sometimes when he runs.

But I also look into John's face as he contemplates a life in which he is not only not being able to run, but also "trapped forever" in what he perceives as a prison. The pain I see there is very sobering.

The people who think that John should just stop running don't know him well. They don't understand what running means to him. Bill does understand, but he also loves his father and hates to see him hurt.

I am relieved to see that Bill is looking for a less draconian answer to the problem than incarceration, but I also see the tough spot he is in. Aside from the quandary his own feelings provide , if he doesn't seem to be trying to stop John from hurting himself, as John's guardian he can be seen as legally negligent and interpreted as not a very loving son if he doesn't act to limit John's ability to hurt himself, when my experience of him suggests that Bill loves his father and is as devoted to him as a son can be! Bill understands the pain that never running again will cause to his father and he seeks to find the Sacred Middle Way.

And yet, if John were 30 years old and persisted in bungee jumping or diving into lakes or rivers off bridges (both inherently more dangerous than running) people might cluck, but no one would be insisting that he had to be stopped.

John has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and I'm sure the day may come when he really doesn't understand the danger inherent in his choice to run. In that case, though he will no doubt be angry with me, I would agree that he would not be in a position to make a meaningful choice. Right now, though, that doesn't seem to be the case. In talking with him, I am pretty clear that John acknowledges that running is a dangerous choice, but the pleasure it brings him when it goes well (far more often than when it doesn't) is, to him, worth the risk he takes .

This matter of our "responsibility" to others where our health is concerned has been on my mind a lot. As a fat diabetic, I find that a lot of people seem to have an opinion about what I should be eating and doing. Maybe that colours my opinions and makes them more "libertarian" than they might otherwise be.

I am irritated with how often the press implies that we all *must* follow the latest advise about how to live forever in our little cotton-wool worlds and I am even more dismayed at how pervasive that opinion seems to be. What of a life worth living? What about the fact that life not only shouldn't be risk free - -it *can't* be risk free. No matter what we do, there are risks. (Even if you never leave your own home, you could find a truck coming through the bedroom wall or an airplane coming through your roof. Improbable, yes, but still possible; just read the paper.)

So, what do you think...how much do we owe other people in making choices about our lives? Do we owe it to the people who love us to try to live absolutely safe lives for as long as possible?