Living and Dying

The overarching theme is that everybody has to learn to take better care of THEMSELVES first -- so that others won't have to do it for them.

A lot of these people are not in the best condition at any point in their lives before they begin a prolonged terminal decline -- from whatever their best health and condition was.

The person in optimal health will continue to improve their health and condition -- to assure their best life -- all their lives, but only a rare few presently have this view of life.  Many others, begin to deteriorate as soon as they get out of high school, and there is nobody telling them what to do and how to live their lives -- which is the beginning of a lifetime of dependency, supported by institutionalized codependency.

Some now even measure their success in life -- by how much they can get other people to do things for them.  They "rely almost totally on the kindness of strangers," and ultimately on their friends and family -- but never themselves -- to assure their best lives.

After a lifetime of living this way, they are not going to be capable of taking care of themselves in their old age -- as many never mastered as young people, or any other prime of their lives.  It was one straight shot downhill.  The obvious cases are the obesity, chain-smoking, drugs and alcohol, addictive dependencies and codependencies -- from which many plunge into their terminal conditions.

But if one is in one's best health, doing all the right things, few can fault one if disaster should strike -- but fully 95% are not beginning at that base level from which to deteriorate -- and dragging everybody down with them, as the only way they know how to do and live their lives.

We also need to learn how to die better -- as well as live better, which is the summation of one's living.  In such a society, the young will not have to sacrifice themselves for the dying, or the old for the young, etc.  No one should have to live for another.  Everybody will have the fullest responsibility to live for themselves -- or to die with dignity and courage -- and not dragging everybody else into the grave with them -- which is the horror of these dying experiences, that should not be the model for the future but the past that we turn away from.

We have to create a better way -- of living and dying, or we are stuck with the present dysfunction.