Saturday, December 28, 2013

To Be One's Best

The only real reason for "exercise" (practice), is to prepare one to do their best -- in the many activities that humans do, including all those daily activities many think are not important -- and to do well, which of course, forms the base for all their subsequent thoughts and efforts.

It is like the preparations athletes do preparatory to making a personal or world record attempt.  The preparation brings them to that point -- and not that they can just jump out of bed, and can perform their best "in their sleep."  In fact, many great athletes have to do extensive periods of warm-up, just to feel "normal" again -- recovering from a previous day's hard "practice," from which it may ache, just to move at all.

Therefore, one must have a way of at least getting back to normal -- let alone attempting one's best.  Many just abandon any notions that they should be even considering their best-- as the worst is all they have come to expect anymore, and are just grateful for modern medicine for the extraordinary efforts that keep them alive -- though in a hopeless deteriorating and terminal condition.  That is what they consider normal "aging," rather than premature aging that their lifestyle and behaviors condemn them to. 

Heretofore, that has been considered normal -- and deviations from that normal, impossible and incredulous.  Thus the thinking that anybody who doesn't exhibit those signs of premature aging (wear and tear), must be because they are rich and can afford endless plastic surgeries to remain so -- rather than that lifelong health, is as nature intended.

Injury and disease, is the way of maintaining the natural balance of ensuring the fitness of a species -- in challenging each to deal with those, and eventually learning to avoid those hazards -- while still maintaining a viable and engaging life.  As such, life always hangs in the balance -- requiring constant adjustment and improvement to better prepare oneself for even greater challenges.  Obviously, that won't simply be doing the same things one always has done before -- but evolving to meet higher levels of challenge -- that is the trigger for growth.

People don't grow because they want to; they grow because they have to -- because they have little control over how those challenges may come.  It could be wars, floods, famines, mechanical failures, human error, as well as congenital conditions, etc. -- the determines the course of one's life -- in their responses to them.  

Sometimes it is appropriate and beneficial to meet force with a greater force -- unless that force is a speeding train, of which no amount of great human strength is going to overcome -- and one must be nimble and quick, and preferably not in the position of vulnerability in the first place.  As always, the response must be total -- balancing the options on many planes, and not just the singular consideration of applying more force or less -- on a single track, of a one-track mind incapable of shifting to any other perspective.

That puts them at a tremendous disadvantage -- in resolving the many challenges of life -- especially if their own response, is one that makes the problem grow larger.  That would be the case of one taking increasingly greater risks, leaving no margin for error, instead of increasing their margins for safety -- and error, because that has more advantages for survival, and that is what fitness is ultimately all about -- increasing one's survival advantage, and beyond that, to live an evermore fulfilling life.

For life to get better, it has to begin on the most basic level -- of how one shifts from sleep, to one's greatest level of responsiveness -- and not that everyone can hit the ground running at top speed and greatest awareness as soon as they get out of bed.  It may even take a while to even get out of bed -- as many with arthritis and other crippling conditions, have known all their lives.  Most, however, cannot shift out of that condition -- but remain so all the rest of the day -- that becomes the totality of all their days.

That is fundamentally the challenge of change -- shifting from one state to quite another -- and that ability, carries over to the many other challenges one encounters in their day and lives.  Not to think that is possible, is quite a depressing prospect and prognosis for one's future -- and the cause of hopelessness in the present.  So one asks, what is the smallest increment of change one can effect?  That is what is meant by the journey beginning with a single step -- and not the despair of thinking one can make a difference without ever taking a single step.

So they think that somebody else will cure them -- or make them better -- and not that that is the primary task of every individual to do for themselves, using the knowledge and tools of the collective human experience and intelligence.  One's uniquely own understanding and contribution, is the summation and integration of all previous human experience actualized in their "reality."

That is who "we" are.  We are what we actually do -- and not what we want everyone else to believe we are.   The condition we are in, makes that obvious to everyone else -- particularly to those taking in all the information.  Some people are just listening to the words -- and if they seem familiar.  But that is seldom the whole truth.

To take in the most information, one has to heighten their senses of what is going on -- as perceived by the organs at the head, hands and feet -- which have evolved for those purposes, as well as to express a response.  That doesn't just happen because one's vital signs are in order.  Those end responses and expressions, are the very meaning of every movement and behavior -- and not that life is meaningful just in prolonging the heart beat and breathing for as long as possible, while ignoring those cognitive actions, for certainly, it is the latter that makes life and fitness meaningful.

That is the quality of life.  And so rather than being ignored and neglected, those are the very organs it is most important to ensure are functioning at its highest levels of possibility by placing that circulation as a priority -- rather than simply working the tireless heart more, and harder.  that is not the deficiency -- as the voluntary movements in the organs at the extremities of cognition, expression and greatest articulation -- which most conventional and traditional exercise fails to address, and thus we have the problem of mental deficiencies and dementias, weakening of the grip, feet too weak to maintain one's balance and stability.  Without those heightened faculties, life becomes very perilous -- and not that the non-responsive and non-functioning individual in those respects -- is in great danger of losing their vital signs.  

It is at the head, hands and feet that humans differentiate themselves from every other animal -- and express their skill at being consummately human.  That is what art, music, dance, athletics, writing, speaking, "looking," are all about -- while the heart and the core is what most animals have in common, and need not be concerned about -- not even the highly intelligent gorilla or dolphin.  It just works unfailingly -- by design and evolution.

The difference though, is the expression and articulation of what the feet, hands and head do -- and how some do it better than others.  But they have to move first, and in doing so, connect the extremities to the core -- because that is the design of the musculature, and how the human body must work to maximize its leverage.  One cannot begin a movement at a joint closer to the core and think they will have a more favorable leverage.  That is simply not possible.  But if the fulcrum (axis of rotation), is as far out as possible, a little bit of force, can have a mighty effect.

That is the intelligence of the human body.  Exercise it.

Friday, December 13, 2013

What Went Wrong?

The erroneous presumption, is that people who are "uninsured," don't pay for goods and services on their own means -- when actually, they are the best-paying customers.  The best example of this are the elective cosmetic surgeries -- which are not covered by insurance -- but that is what the highest paid doctors are working in.

Those who are draining the medical resources, are those who are covered by insurance and abusing those services -- thinking it is an all-you-can-eat affair, and they can even get sick-pay to go to their medical appointments, to boot.

And so Obama and the unions decided they needed people who never go to the doctors to pay into the insurance pool -- to subsidize their Cadillac health insurance, on the argument that those who don't need these medical services, should be forced to pay for those who think that the doctors exist to make them healthy -- and not themselves as every individual's primary responsibility and caregiver.

There's is not enough money in the universe to support a system in which everybody thinks they can receive more than their fair share.

Tuesday, December 03, 2013

Making the Most of What One Already Has

Most people think that all their problems will be solved if they just had "More" -- of anything and everything, never realizing it could be a double-edged sword that is killing them.  Thus despite being morbidly obese, they think they need even more food -- and more time sitting and watching tv -- as the answer to their problem, if they even realize they have a problem.  

Many don't -- and think it is everyone else who has a problem, while they are as perfect as one can imagine themselves being.  To remain in such company, requires one to distort all their other perceptions, in order to comply with their insistence that they are the only one who is normal, and there is something wrong with everything else in the world.

At that point, many people move on -- because of the tremendous drain of energies required to support, and be supportive of such a world view -- in the light of everything else saying "It just isn't so."  So in order to maintain such illusions and delusions, such societies and circles have to become more exclusive, eventually and inevitably isolating such individuals from the joy of shared experiences and fullest participation that is the hallmark of life in society and civilization.  

Among the old, they may no longer have any contact with anyone else anymore -- except for an army of professional caregivers to enable them in their stubbornness to live life their way -- on their own terms, without any acknowledgment or compromise with any other reality -- because now that they are old (senior), it's "their way or the highway" for everybody else, because one thing for certain, is that they will not change -- for anybody else, but even more importantly, for themselves who stand to benefit the most from doing so.

Unfortunately, one observes many lives being lived that way -- apart and insensitive to what is actually going on in the world -- always as a war of that individual, with everyone and everything else in the world.  That is the conditioning they've assimilated, which makes everything they do into a battle, and unnecessarily a hassle -- in everything they do, and so of course they are worn out and beaten down way before their time.

That is the obvious difference between successful living -- and unsuccessful living, which prematurely ages one.  Most people are not just innocent bystanders in the outcomes of their lives.  Everything they do, has made it so.  When one realizes that, then everything one does, takes on a tremendous significance -- and will not say that nothing matters anymore, or can make a difference -- because everything that individual does, makes a difference.  

That is more than just wishful-thinking -- but in seeing the connection, between one thing, and everything else -- and recognizing that it is the proper balance of one thing to every other, that is the proper relationship (ratio), that makes things work -- or fail, and not just indiscriminately "more."  That rarely solves anything, much less the problem one thinks that is the solution for -- and so despite their "more" effort, sweat and pain, the results are not forthcoming, or obvious -- to anyone else.

That is the difference between those who are changing (improving), and those who aren't -- it is strikingly evident to everyone else as well -- and not just one's private fantasy and delusions that they have in fact, conquered the entire world, and now the universe -- while everyone else is deluded, in not agreeing that that is so.  Quite commonly in fact, one threatens to do bodily harm to any and all who do not agree with what they are telling them -- as proof of those truths.  It may be to drop down and give them 20 pushups to show their obeisance and compliance with that as the unquestioned truth.

That is conformance to authority -- and not the truth, that doesn't require the suspension of every other truth to consider.  In fact, every other truth and authentic experience, will conform and confirm the new -- if it is valid.  It is not just a learned and remembered truth -- having no validity in fact and experience -- which so much thinking and writing is about.

The critical faculties of the human body are contained and effected at the extremities -- where the senses are acute for those purposes -- but most lose that sensitivity rather than hone them, largely through disuse, neglect, and taking them for granted that they don't need to be maintained, nor can they be improved.  Yet that is what is most important to improve, as milestones for the measure of quality of life -- which is the bottom line in every human life and experience.

The quality, implies the right quantity -- while no gross amount of quantity, can ensure quality.  It doesn't matter how much of the wrong thing one does; they will not get the right result -- that even a very little of the right thing, will.  That is what one should understand before doing anything -- and not just think that doing anything, is sufficient to get the right result.  The world doesn't work that way.  One should pay attention and observe, listen, and when the understanding is clear and complete, then it produces its own right action -- and not that one has to try something extraordinary to achieve it. 

But no amount of not paying attention, not observing, and not listening -- will do them any good.