Making the Best of Any Age

Younger people want to be older, and older people want to be younger -- so obviously, those who are happiest, are those making the best at whatever age they are -- and not wishing things were different before making the best of each and every present moment.

There are countless dysfunctional people who know exactly what they would do if they won the lottery -- but have no idea what to do under their present circumstances, and are not even going to try.  Instead, they will go into denial that things as they are, is trying to tell them something.  It invariably, is what they don't want to hear -- and deal with -- as the way things actually are.  So they go on to solve some other problem -- imagined or real -- to distract them from the present urgency, hoping it will pass and resolve itself -- as many problems will.

But that seldom gets to the root of the problem -- which causes it to reoccur, more virulently the next time -- until finally, "the shit hits the fan," and life cannot go on any longer in that denial and neglect.  Often, it is one of these famous incidents that become known to the public because of its violence and bizarre circumstances.  And the question that immediately comes to mind is, "What were they thinking -- if they were thinking at all?"

Often those reporting such events, don't first question the particulars of such bizarre events as the first line of defense for an unsuspecting and generally trusting audience.  They think it must be true or why would someone bother informing them of such a thing?  Sometimes they do because it is profitable for them to spread such misinformation -- if the truth won't sell.  Thus they prefer a falsehood that sells well, to a truth with diminishing customers, because once those people know the truth, they have no need to buy more -- of what doesn't work.

That is life in the small pond.  They have to sell more to the same people, rather than one to an ever-expanding universe -- who only need one.  But such products, change the world, and life as we've known it.  They are the products and services of a certain age and time -- that was the springboard for even greater products and innovations -- rather than allowing the same old problems, to simply persist and haunt humanity forever after, as the infamous age-old problems

But are they really the problems of age -- or something else -- something much more fundamental?  And that is the lack of understanding things properly -- invariably because that which was assumed to be true, were never questioned in the first place.  Even the thought of it, is mind-boggling and even insulting to those who thought themselves educated and rational.  What if those problems, are not caused by one's genes, but one's behaviors?  And so when one changes the behavior, those "genes" simply disappear -- or more accurately, are not expressed.

In much the same way, capacities that are never expressed, weaken and may finally be extinguished -- for lack of use, while less desirable traits, are reinforced as the person one has come to be -- and that is true at any age.  That is what we know commonly, as the "lack of exercise."  People are, what they actually do -- and not what they wish to become.  That is just the simple truth of life and living.  So it behooves one, to be that person -- who does that, and not simply know better while doing something else entirely.  And so the difference between the person they are, and the reality they wish to live, grows wider with each day.

Even doing only one thing repeatedly and constantly -- to the exclusion of everything else, will not make one more fit to do everything else -- contrary to what the promoters of that one thing as the only thing will tell us.  You have to do everything else, to be able to maintain those capacities.  That is particularly true with the most versatile and adaptable species -- that are capable of such a wide range of expressions and articulations.  What capabilities are necessary to maintain at at least a functional level all one's life?  That is what has to be maintained -- more than doing any one thing, however repetitively and exclusively.

That which we do most often, is that which is easiest to overlook -- such as sitting, lying, watching television, and compulsively eating, let alone the smoking and drinking with their well-known adverse impacts.  Yet admittedly -- or not, they account for fully 90% of our health problems, when the alternatives, are limitless.  It need not be difficult -- and that manner of thinking, makes it prohibitive -- while those barriers should be lowered as much as possible, to make the doing as effortless as necessary.  That has been the wrong-thinking -- or even lack of thinking, from those agencies and persons charged with encouraging the wider adoption of healthful behaviors.

Beginning is always the hard part.  Once a person has begun, momentum takes over -- and becomes difficult to stop.  So the question to consider offhand, is not how difficult it should be, but rather, how one gets one started -- and once started, should not be discouraged.  Even if done wrong -- because the practice inevitably becomes self-correcting.  "Practice does make perfect" -- as long as it is not made increasingly more difficult as a requirement of that performance.  That's how many go astray -- in thinking that the objective of any practice, is to make it increasingly more difficult.  In doing so, the practice becomes easy, rather than increasingly more difficult -- which should be obvious that one doesn't want.  Done that way, one will eventually have to give up such a practice -- rather than persist in it all one's life, as the foundation of well-being, throughout one's years.

Too many focus on the destination at the end of the journey -- rather than the beginning, which necessarily is the foundation of where one hopes to be.  If the beginning is undertaken, the prospects for that undertaking is auspicious -- over never having taken that first step.  That is the graveyard of most ambitions. Never getting started, never knowing what to do first.  All their energies are focused on what to do last.