This article begins to explore the idea of health. It begins to ask questions about where the idea of health comes from, what it means to different people in different places and why it should matter. As society has been increasingly confronted with the realities of a more economically and technologically driven global society, health has evolved from the human sciences into new spheres, such as politics, economics, popular culture, commerce, and religion, where it has arguably taken on new meanings. The full story of health is the unfolding journey of an idea and how this idea is changing the way people think, feel, and act in today's context. The perspective of health the author presents in this article emerges from her own experiences over the last 31 years. This journey is worth exploring because, as she argues, it coincides with the evolution of ideas about health, from a reductive approach to an emerging approach that embraces health in a "whole"istic way.