First, Be a Good Animal — PART 1 —The Numbers Don’t Lie

The Numbers Don’t Lie

Read Your Instruments

Part One begins with a number.

Not a number you have been told to care about. Not the number on the scale, or your cholesterol reading, or your blood pressure at the last physical — though all of those matter. A different kind of number. The kind that reflects not a snapshot of your health but the direction it is moving.

Five of them, to be precise. Five instruments. Five readings on the panel of the life support system you have been running, without checking the gauges, for most of your adult life.

Let’s look at them.