When I was about 18, a family member who was at my birthday commented on the appearance of one of the other guests. I remember the exact words, but they don’t translate well, so the gist will have to do. She basically said, loudly, that the person in question had the fattest legs she’d ever seen.
The above proverb is meant to instil fear into people’s heart, fear of doing nothing. Sounds scary enough, so it would work for me, if I would believe in a devil, which I don’t. Who needs a devil when taking into consideration what some people are capable of? But that’s beside the point. We were talking about idle hands.
Lately some heavy-duty decision making has come my way. And with it a truckload of ‘what ifs’ have entered my head. Needless to say, being as highly developed as I am spiritually this doesn’t faze me at all. I just sit, meditate for a bit and, lo and behold, the decision just comes rolling out. NOT!
On this website you will find a holistic way of looking at life in general and humans in particular. But what is holistic? Webster defines it as following: holistic: relating to holism; holism: a theory that the universe and especially living nature is correctly seen in terms of interacting wholes (as of living organisms) that are more than the mere sum of elementary particles .
I mentioned it earlier in my blog about stress: fear is in my opinion the ultimate source of the most debilitating stress. Fear to lose, fear to get hurt, fear to not be able to pay your dues, fear to be laughed at, fear to die, fear to live. Fear is evolutionary a good thing.
Talking about stress! The other day I read an article about suicide clusters that have been occurring amongst high school students in Palo Alto over the last years. The gist of it was that, although the establishment denies it fervently, the suicides have been the result of the literally killing competition amongst youngsters in this pinnacle of Western education.
In an earlier blog I told you about the detours I took in coming to where I am now. I don’t know whether you noticed, but I choose my words carefully. The following words just about sum it up: I was on the path that I thought my parents, siblings, friends, acquaintances, society in general would like to see me on. Now, there might be people who get from this sentence that I ‘blame’ others for the turns my journey took. That is not the case, however. The keyword is thought. I thought that I was doing what others wanted. But I very much made the decision to do that myself. I do not view myself as a victim. Far from it. I see myself as a very skilful navigator 🙂
We have discussed the incompatibility of our genes with our current living environment in general, we have discussed food in general and exercise in general. So what more is there? Another matter that definitely deserves attention in this series is the effect of stress on our sense of well-being. Not only do we have too much stress these days, the stress is also completely different from the kind we are evolutionarily used to.
Of course, if it was as simple as just changing your dietary habits and – lo presto – you are in good health, we wouldn’t be having this talk now, would we? There is more to good health than what you put inside your mouth. It also what you put out: exercise. Now, I don’t really like to use the word ‘exercise’, since it always makes me think that it is something that you don’t know how to do by nature. And that is so not true.
In Beginning at the start – part 1 I hope to have established that we, our collection of genes that make up the organism that we are, came into existence under completely different circumstances than those we are living in nowadays. In other words, we were ‘made’ for a different living environment altogether. We hit the surface of the problems that we face when we talked about never being thirsty or hungry anymore and the work load that we have. But there’s more.
