For fifteen years Jim Fixx, author of the jogger’s bible ‘The Complete Book of Running’, ran more than one hundred kilometres a week. Yet at age fifty-two he died of a massive heart attack while running alone on a Vermont road. His wife said she was certain that Fixx had no idea he suffered from a heart problem and refused to get regular checkups. His doctors speculated that his heart was so strong he probably did not have had the telltale chest pains or shortness of breath that usually signal arterial heart disease.
Jim Fixx is a classic example of how a preoccupation with one thing can lead to an unbalanced life with serious consequences to the whole of life. That’s why many of us, while possessing so many things outwardly, still find life so empty, inwardly.