January 30, 2012

Surviving the Future - SHTF - Natural Living - How to be Happy


With only the obtainment of cash as our motivation, we have abandoned health and well-being.  There is no time to eat properly, sleep or even go to the bathroom if it interferes with making money.  Tired and sick we press ahead, chasing the money to satiate our lives.  A body sustained in this matter can only perpetuate continual deterioration.

We eat cheap fast food to save time and money.  However much like with cigarettes and credit, it leaves us with long-term concealed costs for which we are answerable.  The sacrifice of nutrition has left us with malnutritioned bodies unable to thrive and ill prepared to ward off disease.  Instead, our bodies are forced into distortion and discomfort by modifying to accommodate for the unnatural diet.

We can’t really ignore our nagging ailments, can we?  Bowel and digestion problems, insomnia, headaches, heartburn, depression, result from our modern way of life.  Unfortunately we can’t be glad constipated, we can’t be happy hungry, and we can be joyous tired.  How have we come to embrace paying big bucks for drugs that comfort but never cure?  Why do we expect health from prescriptions given by people whose income is made selling pills to the sick?  Do we now all collectively share these pills in our drinking water?

Why do we continue to sacrificially raise money for disease research, when, after all this time, no remedies are forthcoming?  Why do we believe commercials about tooth products recommended by the people who profit from tooth decay?  Why do we spend so much on the quick fix, knowing nurturing our bodies is how to maintain health?

Have we, passively as it may be, laboured for years to finance permanent contamination of our world with the toxic sludge from the bowels of our modern life?  Could it be said that we are like cattle in feedlots held captive away from a natural and prosperous life?  Are we consuming commodities without value, in constant state anxiety and drowning in our own excrement?  Have we too namelessly given our lives for other’s profit? 

This is not the world we were born to and we are not living life as intended.  We are not here to create chaos but to cooperate in harmony with our world.  We cannot buy a healthy planet, just as we cannot buy healthy lives.  This is true no matter how much money you have.  We must fight now for lives of quality, rather than money. 

Are we willing to value our lives enough to ensure for clean air, water or food?  Can we value the quality of the next generation’s lives by allowing them to play peacefully in nature, and grow without being a burden to the earth or the future?  We can even value the lives of others by not exploiting the poor and desecrating nature.

Society has been stoned with delusion and played ignorant to the repercussions of money for long enough.  The world will not end when this generation does.  We do have the power to change the course of our lives.  We can focus on the realities of being alive rather than collective illusions brought about from the addiction of money.  Stop doling out the fuel that is devastating our existence and consuming our future.

Each dollar you have to work for and spend represents your contribution to the health of the world, or its demise.  Who gains from your time to cash exchange, and who loses?  In buying imported products are we taking the food and resources of others, thus creating havoc for the poor in other countries?  Are we, perhaps, even creating our own dependency on these distant countries for our most basic needs?  Are we putting the security of our food in the hands of strangers who understandably have only profit in mind?  It is time to wake up to the exact costs of our purchases, not just the sticker price. 

Can you see more value in a used car rather than a new one? What does it cost in hours of work and worry and time away from your real life to keep it?  To produce one, the environment pays as dearly as your bank account.  Who hasn’t driven around town to find bargains only to burn up that savings in the search?  When you buy a frozen dinner, in its aluminum container wrapped in cardboard and plastic, consider the cost and pollution caused to create the packaging.

Plastic bags save trees but plastic is forever garbage.  Even using cloth bags for groceries, you can’t avoid the fact each item is already covered in its own plastic and the refuse will go into another plastic bag for disposal.  If personally accountable for the lifetime of your purchases and their packaging, how much Styrofoam and plastic, bleach and chemicals, bottles and cans, batteries and electronics would be in your yard?  The world would be a totally different place if we were all truly responsible for the everlasting remnants of all our buys. 

As people using the modern world, it is also our responsibly to clean up this mess and reverse the environmental destruction.  Esoterically sorting our garbage is not the solution, we must stop producing it.  It is not a matter planting trees to offset our carbon emissions; it is a matter of not producing carbon emissions. 

World pollution is the result of our unnatural existence, and an uncertain future can not be passively anticipated.  It is not only someone else’s problem, it is ours.  We can not sweep this problem under the rug and pretend it doesn’t exist.  There is no out of sight out of mind as we watch our sisters and brothers suffer or die from the state of environment.

Intermission - Spring Meadow Walk - Ode to Spring - Wild Meadow in Canada





It was a beautiful morning, turn up your speakers to hear the bugs and birds.  The meadow is slowly being integrated with medicinal herbs and food plants.  Unfortunately by fall, without my grooming all summer, I was unable to even walk in the unruly meadow at all as the burdock was so formidable.

Over the last 3 days we have gotten over 2 feet of snow.  All you can see the seed stalks from all the weeds, left to mature, standing to attention in the sea of snow.  Walking today, cursing the work I see for me in the spring, what I saw brought tears to me eyes (easy to do because I am old and sentimental, but) . . . . hundreds, without exaggeration, of little birds partying it up in my meadow.  These seed heads are beacons of food and socializing in the snow.  Seems all the little birds from miles around were flitting about happy and  eating like it is the biggest buffet they have ever seen!

Nature knows, we can plan, worry, and decide, but nature knows.  Everyday she confirms her monarchy, and everyday I am blessed to be her subject.




January 23, 2012

How to be Happy - SHTF - Surviving the Future

 
The reality is we cannot have everything we want, whenever we want it.  We all have to do things we don’t want to do and be some ways we don’t want to be.  It is not appropriate to want to be perfect and desired by everyone.  For happiness we only need those who we desire to desire us.

The true qualities are unseen, they are our most valuable assets.  Unlike the transience of power and possessions, qualities are permanent, complex and engaging.  Who and how deep you love is invisible, but none the less exists and is everything.  Isn't it the invisible value of her big heart, their steadfast devotion, or his sense of humour which make them so endeared and not the size of their shirts or their wallets? 

When young and unblemished, we were ignorant and insecure; when secure and smart, we are old and blemished.  Youthful dreams are equal in value to the wisdom of age.  We can only have what we have when we have it.  If you are irregular, stupid, lazy, fat, or whatever, stop being so mean to yourself, accept your life without shame.  Limitations are natural components to life, rather than forsake, ironically, allow us to live fuller lives.

Designed by nature, intricately and uniquely, we are to be perfect imperfections.  He doesn’t look like he thinks he should look, any more than you do.  Is your granny perfectly imperfect?  Of course she is.  Is the birth of a down’s child a mistake?  No certainly of course it is not.  We are all imperfections for the world, how arrogant to assume otherwise.  Beyond our comprehension, and at the whims of our limitations and attractions, we are perfect for our role in the story of humanity.

You won’t always look like a teenager, anymore than you looked like a baby when you were a teenager, and this is a good thing.  Talk about personal body modification!  Celebrate the being who has stood the test of time, the marks and colors of victories and defeats.  Accept you as the beast you have to wear, enjoy both your youthful zest and insight from experience.  Everyone has their place without them the world would not be the same.

Like pieces of an elaborate 3D puzzle, our contribution is necessary for the world to evolve as it should.  Some people have money all their lives, some never have love, some can’t walk, and the variations are endless.  We have no choice in the life, only in the living.  By overcoming our shortcomings and embracing our qualities we can successfully forge ahead.  With natural activity our bodies can take us to all the places of our imagination. 

Intricately designed for our role on the planet, we are here to play a profound part in the collective awe of things.  From gains and losses our humanity is woven into the fabric of life, each fashioned specifically to interlock with others and the world.  The design allows us to share our powers with the rest of the world.  We should gladly embrace our anomalies and idiosyncrasies, as they make us special and most valued in the collection.

Look with fascination how all animals have different attributes and limitations, beyond their control, which make them unique and powerful.  This is true for the fish, the plants, all living, each a fingerprint of life.  By nature, each variance can contribute to community, biodiversity and sustainability.  Each can look similar, but all are having exclusive experiences, and original lives.  Variance is the magic to which we can only sit in innocent astonishment as its singularity sustains us all. 

Every living thing has its own invisible agenda and sense of how to be successful.  What you think is who you are.  You are the imaginary conversation that comforts you like a friend and shows you the way when you have no idea where you are.  It knows the truth, things you sense but have ignored.  It is not the conversation that criticizes, belittles and creates turmoil for you at every turn.  Telling yourself you are not worthy of feeling happy, satisfied or guiltless will slowly extinguish you.  Living without pretence honestly embracing reality frees us to live worthy lives.

Life is not a random act.  Genetics can distinguish us all, but it is the unseen spark necessary for life living within us that distinguishes us all most.  Living has meaning and our existence powerful and important.  Be true to your real identity and honour as paramount your internal dialogue.  You have the right to be here, the right to your needs, and the right to share your true self with the world.

January 02, 2012

Surviving the Future SHTF



 
 **Stand up to your obstacles and do something about them.
You will find that they haven't
half the strength you think they have.**
Norman Vincent Peale