Say I lead a healthy life but I end up with cancer because of the effects of pollution on me. I'm not directly responsible so should I be punished by lack of health care? No. But then again, if we are putting all our energy into finding Band Aids to hide the real, underlying problems, are we really changing anything except extending our little individual lives that we somehow have come to see as the be all and end all?
It's true If I had a choice between preserving my life or dying in an epidemic that led people on a large scale to really start to look with sincerity into what we are doing to each other and if they made changes on that level, I'd drop today for that.
(Sweet Jesus, here she goes all Silkwood/Erin Brokovich on us.)
Yeah, I am so freaking idealistic sometimes it scares me, too. Like I said, I'm not getting rid of my insurance, but I do think about things on that level and these decisions really are this serious, if not for ourselves, then for those generations coming up behind us.
This kind of thinking doesn't make me morose or anti-social. It just opens my eyes more so that when I make a decision about things (and I don't do this with every decision) I am more confident that I am putting my money where my mouth is (or heart, more accurately).
If this is so logical and easy to do, then why are you assuming we aren't consciously chosing what is bad for us? Maybe we are happy the way things are and you are simply trying to convince us that we shouldn't be. Maybe we've been making conscious choices all along and you just don't like them because you are an elitist homemade granola eating snob.
You know, I almost wish that were the case but I talk to too many people to be able to buy that argument. Those of us who work in the personal development field, like Steve Pavlina and myself, see mounting evidence that people are tired of struggling and are increasingly ready to make significant changes to improve their lives in very core ways, not just materially.
We appreciate how powerful the forces are that have gotten folks stuck to begin with. Lots of antidepressants being consumed out there. Lots of people seriously stressing about their futures, financially, career-wise. I'm middle aged so lot of my friends and acquaintances are too and their parents are starting to die off or get hit by health issues. Mortality is less of an abstract concept. Mid-life crisis is a real phenomenon and the young people coming behind us are telling me that we look like a bunch of whack jobs. Kids are failing to launch, in large part because we've made adult life look like one of Dante's layers of Hell. Ask any young person to name five adults he thinks are really having fun in their life. Ask a young woman who her older models of healthy, passionate aging are. They don't see many!
Article comments