The Doctor Weighs In

I think this is an article about health.  It is about mental health, anyway.  And even though health care professionals have done their best to separate mental from physical health, the last time I looked in the mirror, my head (where my brain resides) was attached to the rest of my body by a lot of flesh, bones, nerves and blood vessels.

Anyway, what I really want to write about today is how much fun it is to spend time with people who are different from me – in a variety of ways.  I started my day going to Dim Sum here in Houston.  Dim Sum, for those of you not familiar with it is a high-calorie, highly tasty communal Chinese-style brunch.

The restaurant staff wheel little carts around the diners’ tables offering such tasty morsels as siu mai (small steamed dumplings with either pork, prawns or both inside a thin wheat flour wrapper), bau (baked or steamed, fluffy buns made from rice flour filled with food items ranging from meat to vegetables to sweet bean pastes, exotic veggies), fried chicken feet, and very sweet Chinese dessert pastries.  Yum yum, dim sum (my attempt at poetry).   [No, I am not going to get into how greasy and high calorie dim sum is, this is a piece about joy and happiness].

Folks attending our Dim Sum feast were as diverse as the food.  I sat next to a woman originally from El Salvador who has been an accountant in Houston for many years; a young man from Cambodia who told me he couldn’t understand why his parents would ever want to go back to visit a country from which they had barely escaped with their lives in 1975; a couple born in Puerto Rico, part of a large close knit family here in Houston; and an “ordinary” white woman who lived in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico for seven years and later taught English as a second language in Northern China (near Mongolia) and then traveled by herself throughout China.

Later on the same day, I went to a Spanish Language “Meet-up” to watch an old Cantiflas movie in Spanish (no subtitles).  I loved it for about two hours or so and then had to leave because my head was reeling after trying to understand rapid fire Spanish and the slapstick humor of Cantiflas.

My husband and I have traveled all over the world and we have loved (almost) every minute.  But recently, here in Houston, I have had the chance to really get to know people different from me.  This week, my long time personal trainer (KW), told me a black joke about white people.  He mimicked a black guy hearing gun shots and coolly, but quickly, walking away from the area.  He then showed me what he thinks white people do when they hear gun shots.  Waving his arms in the air and running towards  the shots, he yells, “Hey, what’s going on, I think I heard shots, we ought to see what is going on.”  It was so funny, I had to put down my weights and laugh out loud.

We all know that laughter is good for our health.  And that is how come I am making this a blog about health.  Our world is now so small that we can come in contact every day with people different from ourselves.  Different color, shape, size, religion, sexual preference, interests, language, abilities and disabilities, and on and on and on.  It is very cool and very fun to meet people different from me.

I hate it that there are some talk shows and some politicians that want to make us fearful of our differences (BTW, I think hate is bad for our health). Relishing in the diversity of mankind can turn on our brains, help us laugh at ourselves, and open us up to new ideas, challenges, and most importantly, new people.