Self-Reliance (Self-Discovery)

 In troubled times, one is required to do everything for themselves -- and not rely on anybody else to do it for them.  Most often, those others will simply not be around -- especially if one is on a road less traveled.  If one has ever been in such a situation, one vows to be better prepared the next and all subsequent times -- and not take it for granted that help will arrive -- just because one wants it.  Increasingly, most of life is that way -- and any help and cooperation is always appreciated, but should never be taken for granted, or worse, feel entitled to.

The obvious situations are the earthquakes, fires, floods, plagues, famines, along with innumerable man-made disasters -- often by following sanctioned advice.  But as long as it doesn't work for everybody else, nobody notices that there could be another way -- a better solution, especially when all thought of such is banned and prohibited -- by the powers that wish to exercise that exclusive control.  Such watershed events happen at least once in every lifetime -- whether it is a war, plague, tsunami, personal disaster and loss.  Everyone will experience at least once in their life -- and those who haven't, still have that to learn, and benefit from.

So it is much better to have won and lost a fortune, than only known winning -- with never a loss, because that loss teaches one something even more valuable than never having loss -- yet.  Because one day it does come, and one is totally unprepared for it -- which is always a greater calamity than those who have been there before.  That is one of the advantages of age -- and having lived a long enough life to have experienced many things -- and have died and been reborn to survive anew.

The caveat of course, is that one survives to learn from that lesson -- and also learns not to tempt fate unnecessarily.  Every mistake and overestimation of one's abilities, could be one's last.  And that is not foolish, for those who survive to 100.  They've demonstrated what it takes to get there.  But just crawling over the finish line after everybody else has gone home, is not enough -- to make one "first."  One wants to discover something else in which they can really be first -- and not the last, and receiving a "Participation" trophy for still thinking it matters.

Better they should create their own event -- in which they really do come in first -- such as the first to live to 100, and not look 100.  That is yet to be achieved -- but surely, that milestone will be breached -- as has to, for living even longer, to have much meaning at all.  So those who merely they can live forever on artificial life support, obviously haven't thought the implications of life at all.  Even if one has all the money in the world to afford, does one want to end up a pile of unrecognizable protoplasm in some laboratory-sealed bunker -- far from the river of life?

I don't think so -- but there may be a billionaire or two looking forward to such a precedence.  Much things are possible these days -- but why not the truly amazing, and unthinkable?  That would obviously be for a person to live a hundred years while still getting better -- not as a lie not to hurt their feelings, but actually so, because they actually do all the right things -- and not simply the "right" things that don't work.  That could be true for diet, exercise, lifestyle -- if it doesn't actually work -- but instead, multiplies the many incurable contemporary diseases and afflictions of these times.

A few perceptive researchers and thinkers about life have questioned that maybe everything they thought was true, is not -- as the simple and obvious explanation for why their models and theories do not work -- rather than insisting that they must be true -- despite the results and consequences.  That has been the experience of human consciousness and thought for as long as there is a record of thoughts -- and how individuals, cultures and societies, have attempted to circumvent it -- as the cult of "immortality" in every civilization -- that forms the basis for most religions.

It is the "greater life" in some vague manner that resonates in every culture.  But how that is to be manifested "in the flesh," remains to be seen.  That is what we really want to know -- as the fountain of youth, or the holy grail -- which is that eternal quest for the unknown beyond.  The "known" has its obvious limitations -- that does not get us there -- obviously.  Thus, one has very little to lose going where everybody else has gone before -- even if it is the conventional wisdom that fails everybody else.  We don't need further proof of that. 

The answer must lie beyond this known.  It is the unthinkable.  But only time will tell -- as the first who get there, and share that accomplishment in the unprecedented manner not possible before.  One YouTube video claimed to be a 100 year old ballerina -- which would have been impressive if that were true -- but alas, she turned out to be only 78 -- a remarkable achievement in itself -- and opening up the possibility that it will be achievable in her own lifetime.  However, ballet is a perilous vehicle for achieving and exhibiting that -- and any fall from that grace, might put an end to further progress.

So it would be appropriate to ask, how would one demonstrate the robustness and viability of life at that age and condition?  Does one necessarily have to run a marathon -- that actually eliminates the field rather than increases the access -- by anybody still living and breathing.  That's really not hard to conceive -- if one can let go of all the requirements of all those activities that aren't working, and in most cases, eliminate the participation.  You don't get there by eliminating the field of participants.

And that is what the competitive model of athletics and activities deliberately seek to do -- eliminate all the others until only the one remains.  But is that necessarily what one wants to do?  You can always isolate the one who will be the rare exception -- but if one wishes to discover a general principle, that is the last thing one would do.  You don't want to know what only works for one -- no matter how exceptional.  You wish to find out what works for most -- so many get there, and then you see the possibilities -- of life beyond.

A sedentary life, or even a bedridden one, should not be a limitation.  If one prefers to sit, one need not be forced to stand, nor the bedridden to walk -- when doing so only increases their risk of further danger and injury.  Even then, that does not preclude any and all movement -- particularly of what is most significant to move, and that is the blood -- not primarily dependent on the constant heart action -- but greatly impacted by the engagement of those muscles seldom mobilized.  If fact, many think they are immobile -- when they are still capable of the greatest movements possible, which are at muscles of expression.  They are also the areas greatest distance from the heart -- at the head, hands and feet -- which articulating, and increasing their health and functioning particularly, is mostly the movements that matters.

If those fine-motor movements and expressions can be maintained -- and even enhanced, then one is still improving, and growing.  There is no greater self-evident truth.

Tyranny of the Old

  The more things change, the more resistance there is to the new ways -- even when they are far better.  Nowhere is that more true than in aging itself -- that many will affirm and insist that that is what getting old is -- and must be forevermore, even when modern thinking has discovered the true keys to health in longevity.  Many will still prefer the old ways of relentless aging and dysfunction -- to living a different life.  That is all they've seen and know -- and all they think possible.

Even in their best case scenarios, it is to deteriorate as long as possible to eventual indefinite artificial life support -- rather than renewal and rejuvenation as they experienced earlier in life.  Obviously, they won't get there following the advice and even commands that haven't worked out so well -- for anyone!  Still, that is the expectation -- if not the demand from everyone around them -- to just be like everyone else, and fall apart piece by piece.

But it doesn't have to be that way -- if it definitively is not working.  One then has to realize they have to find their own way -- and not just the way prescribed for everyone else -- that is not working for either.  And in fact, they all come down with the same predictable "age-related" diseases -- which are more accurately, just a matter of time to manifest.

Those are the metabolic diseases of accumulation -- of all that is toxic, while simultaneously eliminating all that is healthful to the body.  Chief among them is the substitution of sugar (carbohydrates) for every other nutrient -- with the predictable results.  The brain, muscles, and all the other organs cannot repair and rejuvenate themselves -- until all that one has, is depleted, and there is no more life force and the resources to sustain them.

That is not metaphysical, but the actual realities of any existence.  To the right-thinking person, that is fair enough -- and proves one's fitness for life -- that they got it right, and no amount of wrong, can make that difference.  It doesn't matter how many "experts" say it is so -- if it doesn't work for you -- and that is the whole truth of the matter.  It doesn't matter how many others it has been purported to work for.

"Science" is being able to test the truth of any matter for oneself -- and confirm or disprove the truth of it for oneself, and not just "listening to the experts," who may have their own agenda entirely.  Very often, it is to command what everybody else thinks is the truth -- rather than in allowing them to find out for themselves.  This manner of promotion, is merely authoritarianism -- in which people just accept whatever the authorities tell them -- and are usually forbidden to think and find out otherwise.  It is an age-old thread in human experience and evolution -- before a great leap forward -- because reality demands it.

But not everybody makes the leap -- and then those of the old guard -- become the last, while the eager and bold, become the first into the new world.  Again, time plays its role -- waiting for everything to fall into place -- even in the most unpredictable ways.  Who would have guessed that all the gyms would be shut down -- and then the only way of exercising, was with no equipment, accessories, and uniforms -- and everybody would be forced to create exercise as best they can, with whatever they have.  The magic is not in the machine -- or any other apparatus.  It is in the knowledge of one's own discoveries and insights.

Insanity is doing the same things over and over again hoping for a different (better) result -- rather than discovering what actually works -- and then improving upon it.  Knowledge is always at the beginning of the journey and not the end of the need for understanding.  For a whole generation to come to that reckoning is a global shock in consciousness -- that simply accumulating information is not enough, but the integration of all that is known into something unpredictably greater -- is the next step in evolution.

That is the transformation from health care to real health, as the new reality of our existence.   Then the possibility of people living to 100 -- in perfectly good health becomes possible, rather than merely wishful-thinking for most.  Of course one doesn't get there just by eating everybody else's desserts.  In fact, that is the known path to all diseases.  It should be obvious by now that doing all the wrong things results in poor health -- and that is not just handed out randomly, or to those who doggedly repeat what is not true -- and gets no favorable results.

There is a reason some are more susceptible to all manner of diseases and misfortunes -- while others experiencing those same challenges -- overcome those adversities and become stronger and fitter -- with time on their side.  Then the game changes entirely -- when time is on one's side, rather than working relentlessly against them -- waiting to go off.  That's the chance everybody takes -- whether they want to or realize.

With those prospects, one should hope for the best, while preparing for the worst -- because the reality will fall somewhere in between -- and just hoping for the best, OR preparing for the worst, will not be a sufficient response for life ahead.  That is what an intelligent person does -- prepare for many scenarios of varying possibilities -- and never expecting that everything will go according to their demands from everybody else.

Life is extremely personal in that way.  It's not a random walk through life -- but an increasingly focused and sensible one.  Increasingly, what one sees, is what they get, and not something opposite -- as many believe possible.  But that is a good model for testing -- to hone and refine one's knowledge to greater precision and effectiveness -- than just knowing the one thing that isn't working very well, and thinking that is all life has to offer -- for assuredly, it is not.  There are all the possibilities of life -- that some will convince us are disastrous except for their solution -- but merely prolongs and exacerbates one's condition, until finally there is nothing left.

That is the choice of freedom -- to be what one individually wants to be -- and not just have it determined by the authoritarian others -- who say "this cannot be done, and that cannot be done," because all things are possible -- until proven otherwise.  Then, one can discover and actualize the greater life the powers that be insist are impossible, and should never even be thought about -- as their chosen role in society.