Jane Austen Quote Week 61

Funny that we’re into Sanditon since last week, for I’d pick another Sanditon theme a month ago just for preparation. Well, Linda dearest, great mind and all…

Anyway, Sanditon quote this week is an inspiration of healthy attitude towards our own health. Or rather, human’s occasional unhealthy attitude towards health as described here, from Sanditon Chapter 10:

‘Disorders and recoveries so very much out of the common way, seemed more like the amusement of eager minds in want of employment than of actual afflictions and relief. The Parkers were no doubt a family of imagination and quick feelings – and while the eldest brother found vent for his superfluity of sensation as a projector, the sisters were perhaps driven to dissipate theirs in the invention of odd complaints.’

The Parker sisters should really talk to Mrs. Bennet, for she also loved to complain about her health in order to gain other’s compassion (or perhaps due to lack of conversational themes). And of course Jane Austen despised such a habit. Why, she was very ill at the end of her life, but she still maintained a high spirit and even wrote some poems a few days before her death. What a woman!

But of course the bottom-line is that we should maintain our health, our prime capital the best we can. And if we unfortunately are presented with illness, we must seek beyond the sickness to see what caused it and what changes we can make in our lives to alleviate it. We are so fortunate to live in the 21st century with advance medical knowledge; one would wonder why there are souls who still take pleasure in demanding attentions from others by exaggerating their illness, instead of taking self-command and responsibility to deal with it.

I hope I’m not too harsh, and that dear friends here do not misinterpret my words as being cruel or so. I certainly do not mean to offend anyone who is currently ill and unable to perform as usual. I used to be ill myself, and I realised the power and importance of self-commitment to recover and stay healthy ever since. Blessings for you all.

Pic: Florence Nightingale, the Western epitome of ground-breaking medical woman. I wish Jane Austen would have known her (or did Florence read Jane’s novels?). Picture from Wikipedia.