Health is important, it’s the main aspect of living a happy, full life. Being healthy means being able to freely live your life. But here’s the problem: what is healthy? The only dictionary definition that didn’t actually involve the word healthy told me that it meant being “prosperous” or “sound,” but even those are pretty vague. Most people would probably tell you that it means eating a balanced diet without a lot of sugar, fried foods, or salt and getting a lot of exercise. Other people would tell you that it means being mentally clear and strong, in charge of your mental faculties. Others would tell you it means having a life balanced between work friends and family. But what if it’s all of them?

What if being really healthy and having a truly healthy life means being physically, mentally and socially healthy? As someone that’s had problems with all three of these, achieving any one of them is a high ideal. With this blend, healthy seems completely unattainable.

Eating a healthy, balanced diet and exercising can be difficult on a normal basis, especially for a college student when you have class, homework, a job, clubs and any number of things competing for your time. There are days when you don’t have an hour or even half of one to get to the gym. It can get time-consuming. It can also get time-consuming to try and eat healthy all the time when there are limited dining hall options and you don’t always have the time or money to get to the grocery store. Sometimes it’s just easier to call for takeout or eat the candy you have stashed. And once you stop eating really healthy it can be hard to go back. It takes a lot of willpower and discipline to stay physically healthy all the time.

Staying mentally healthy can be just as difficult. You can never control everything that happens in your life, and one bad thing can completely change an outlook and send someone spiraling. When something goes wrong it’s very easy to get overwhelmed and it takes time, patience, hard work and a lot of self-care to get back to a place where one feels under control.

Being socially healthy means balancing all the parts of your life, it means having fulfilling supportive relationships. It means being focused on work while also having time to spend with your friends and family. Needless to say, this requires a lot of effort, work and time.

So maintain all these different health all the time seems almost impossible. And there’s still no real definition for what health actually means. Does it mean one of these? Two? All of them? I have and still do struggle with all three of these, and the one thing that I’ve found is that at any given time the definition for health is different. At one time, one aspect of what it means to live a healthy life could fall short and that becomes the thing that I have to focus on. The best that I can ever do is balance between the different parts of what it means to be healthy. Being healthy is being balanced between being physically, mentally and socially healthy. Of course, there are so many other definitions: having a healthy body image, healthy self-esteem, a healthy sense of self. All of these come with balance, with knowing what you need and what to focus on. All of these kinds and versions of healthy are tied together under the word that represents them.