Wishing You Good Health: A Worthy New Year’s Salutation and Resolution

Did you spend January first drafting a to-do list of resolutions? This may be an unfair question for anyone who recovered from New Year’s festivities stretching well past midnight. For those of you who were well rested the following day or simply eager to start the New Year with ambition, were you quick to write down your desired goals for 2025? If creating a list of resolutions was at the forefront of your mind, what did you prioritize as important tasks to accomplish in the new year? More exercising? Decluttering your home? Significantly cutting down on your consumption of chocolate? Signing up for an online creative writing class? Scheduling a colonoscopy?

Some of the aforementioned resolutions may be familiar to anyone who takes the ritual of pursuing a New Year’s task in the name of self-renewal or self-improvement seriously. However, some may wonder how pondering healthcare needs, such as a colonoscopy, could motivate anyone to consider their inclusion on a resolution list.

Relevance of the Salutation, “Wishing You Good Health.”

New Year’s resolutions reflect many sought-after areas of personal or spiritual renewal and development. One area I feel is worthy of underscoring, even if it doesn’t generate the excitement one anticipates from starting a new gym membership or reading club, is routine health screenings. Many individuals may procrastinate about this topic until their healthcare provider pesters them about follow-through. However, routine health screenings, especially those as necessary as colonoscopies, should be among our new year goals to pursue proactively.

Some individuals may have trepidations about undergoing a health screening due to fears of learning about a condition that may compromise their health in the near or distant future. Yet, this fear should prompt anyone to proactively follow through with a screening referral or recommendation. Healthcare providers consider health screenings essential to the prevention or early detection of serious health conditions. As noted on the John Hopkins Medicine website, it’s preventive care that “contributes to better outcomes and a longer lifespan.” And according to the World Health Organization, this form of intervention has proven vital for individuals at risk of life-threatening diseases, such as colon and breast cancer. Recommendations from health screenings for addressing potential illness concerns can range from lifestyle changes (e.g., eating healthier foods, going on more walks) to further follow-ups involving minimally invasive medical procedures (e.g., a laparoscopy). Delaying or ignoring such recommendations, however, could lead to more unpleasant and invasive interventions, including major surgeries and long-term treatments that may not guarantee an outcome that will prevent a premature loss of life.

I agree this is not an uplifting read about New Year’s resolutions. Nevertheless, it’s a worthy conversation since it pertains to identifying personal goals for the New Year geared toward any practice or lifestyle change that could enhance one’s personal development and well-being. To temper the discomfort or hesitancy that may come from considering something that may understandably cause some to feel anxious or overwhelmed initially, consider my one-hundred-word prose, Bottoms Up. Hopefully, it provides levity around the prospect of undergoing a common and life-saving screening procedure.