BENGALURU: How often do you check your health? There are general guidelines - we are supposed to check our physical health every couple of years in our 30s, atleast once a year in our 40s and 50s, and even more often after that. These health checks usually include everything from a complete blood work for liver function to cholesterol levels to white blood cells and everything else. It includes X-Rays, lung capacity test, treadmill tests, ECGs, and even EEGs. By the time we are in our 40s, we have learned enough about what we need to do to prevent future disasters, and are already popping a pill or few for something or the other, including a supplement or two, some nutritional and others, just to increase immunity.
Many corporate organisations require their employees to mandatorily check their health through Executive Health Checkup plans. The more generous organisations often offer even more health tests such as eye tests, hearing tests and so much more.
They focus so much on our physical health, wanting to make sure that we are in the best of health and can work as well as we possibly can. Quite a few companies even extend these health checkups to all the immediate family, recognising that the health of our loved ones is just as important to us as our own and therefore, equally important for the employer as well.
On the other hand, how often do you check your relationship’s health?
Very few of us really take the trouble to check our relationship for its health. Nothing very concrete. We might have a conversation or two, not much more than, “All fine?” or “Are you happy? Anything you need?” kind of open-ended questioning that elicits a little more than a nod or a reluctant “Yes, I suppose so!” or worse, “Why are you even asking? There’s so much to do and I don’t have the time to sit and do all this random talking! Now, whose turn is it to do the laundry?” or something mundane like that.
And do you see your organisation asking you anything about your relationship or family?
Quite likely not. Employers often treat relationships and families as totally private matters, and while they might organise family days and other events as part of the employee engagement process, chances are that the health of the relationship as such is seen as a completely private matter which the organisation doesn’t get involved in at all.
If the organisation can be invested in your spouse’s blood sugar, thyroid levels and blood pressure, why aren’t they equally invested in your relationship as a whole? Does it stem from a Victorian sense of privacy, an assumption that all things about a relationship are intimate and should not be talked about at all?
What would it be like if we all took as good and as hard a look at the health of our key relationships as often as we do on our bodies? What if our employers encouraged us to do that? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
The author is a counsellor with InnerSight