The Future Will Be Different

Very obviously, the only hope for a viable future, is that more people are going to have to learn to take better care of their own health -- and not just rely on the acute care medical system to make them well.

Fortunately, all the information is available to them to do so now, but they have to learn that they have to do things for themselves -- because nobody else can do it for them.

That's going to require a huge culture change from Hawaii's traditional culture of increasing dependency and co-dependencies.

That will give a whole new meaning to the "survival of the fittest." Those who are self-reliant and self-sufficient have a healthy and happy future to look forward to -- of increasing health even as they grow older, but those aging in the traditional fashion, have to realize it is a choice, and not a destiny.

That is the major difference between healthy people and people who have a multitude of health problems and conditions -- what they can do about it. Even your doctors will tell you so -- and if they don't, find a better doctor or health care program, than those who merely say, "That's okay, you have good medical insurance, We'll take care of everything."

That's a real change in the mentality and mindset that will make the biggest difference in the quality of life, which more than the cost of living, is the true measure of well-being. Yet usually, if not unfortunately always, these are discussions only about the money -- rather than all the intangibles, that is the bottom line of existence. Of course nobody wants to live a longer life in pain and declining health and circumstances -- but is there a way to ensure this adequacy and abundance beyond the money.

And that has always been -- knowledge, insight and awareness -- that is worth far more than the money, and with it, one can even make money, but always, it costs one less money, and sometimes, dramatically less, so that much that people spend their entire fortunes and health on, can seem to be free and unlimited.

But it doesn't just happen; an individual (and it has to be an individual responsibility and undertaking), and is not achievable just by group-think, or the "political correctness" (conventional wisdom), but is the looking beyond what others want one to know -- to what one desires for themselves to know.

That's not the kind of world we were brought up in, and certainly not the education we receive in the schools, which is about the conformity, and even coercion into one way of thinking -- even if it doesn't work, and produces the problems of these times.

That is the challenge of living in any time, in any society, anywhere -- but what else is more important to do?