The Survival of the Fit

 The problem with making everything into a competitive activity is that there is only one winner, and everybody else has to lose -- no matter how worthy their efforts and achievements.  That is true regardless if one is doing what is beneficial to themselves most of all -- which really ought to be the true measure of what everybody does in life.  Is it good in and of itself, and not, whether one wins a trophy at the end.  That is making everything in life into a trivial activity -- and not the valuable one each life can measure for itself.

That was the operant mentality of the 1970s that thought the only reason for doing anything, was to be first and foremost, and everything else did not matter, when in fact, the competition for that supreme distinction, was the least important concern.  It doesn't matter how low one's body fat is, or target heart rate, or for that matter, how much one can bench press, squat and deadlift -- and those concerns get in the way of achieving optimal functional health --  which is not measured by those things but the qualities of life that escape narrow measurements -- and become meaningless once they are achieved.

It does not matter how much one already knows -- as it does how much one is capable of learning beyond that.  That is what trips up a lot of people thinking their past accomplishments are what matter -- when the greater life lies ahead, waiting to be discovered.  What that is, nobody knows yet -- but those thinking it is simply the same thing -- but a little more, or more than everybody else has, is not thinking expansively enough -- particularly to their own existence, which is really what matters.  That is the meaning of life for every individual -- and not just what one individual has determined must be the criteria for everyone else.

Such thinking is not a mature mind -- but the quintessential immature mind that believes the rest of the world exists only to fulfill their own needs and ego.  So what they think is important, is what everybody else in the world must also -- and compete against them for singular primacy.  Those are usually to be found in the arenas competing for fame and fortune -- thinking everybody else in the world showed up just to cheer them on.  Of course, those are the familiar celebrities who think that all of life is a popularity contest -- and they who get the most "likes" or toys, wins -- or some such eternal glory and place in the record books.  So they are quick to enshrine themselves -- and begrudgingly others, for their self-aggrandizing behaviors -- as though they were great attainments of humankind.

Nobody cares what you can bench press, squat, deadlift, or target your heart rate and body fat -- because they are not great achievements in every life, because each is just a pebble on the journey to greater individual attainment -- and was never meant to be the universal standard by which all are judged for ultimate merit.  How each achieves and actualizes their own life is a deeply personal and significant thing -- and not the gross measurements that self-aggrandizing and self-promoting bit players want everybody else to believe as the eternal attainments and standards which will stand the test of time.  That is for posterity to determine properly.

So survival is not only for the "fittest" but awaits the judgment of time -- to prove that was so.  It may even seen that one was doing everything wrong -- but in the end, turned out to be right, while those who thought they were doing everything right, and had all the spoils to "prove" it, end their days as mere shadows of themselves long ago.  So much so, that it now seems so illusory -- and may as well never happened.  Time and age is very cruel in that respect -- as it reveals who really was right and wrong -- in doing what they did.

People don't age badly because they did all the right things -- nor do they age well doing all the wrong things -- as much as the mainstream media would like us to believe there are no differences, and it is wrong to try to distinguish the good from the bad.  Obviously, that is why most of them are working in that media -- getting paid to convince others of what is not true.  If it were for the reason of telling the truth as the truth, there would be no reason to pay them so richly -- for selling their souls for fame and fortune.  They would simply be satisfied with knowing the truth for once in their lives -- and the clouds of confusion and dysfunction would part, revealing the stairway to heaven.

But we never get there as long as there are those thinking to be the sole and exclusive winners in their battle to be the fittest -- as most worthy, and deserving of survival.  The stairway is vast, and will allow many to get there -- and not just the one who can emerge from the narrow tunnel as the singular winner.  However, that does not mean that any idea is as good as any other, because there are consequences, cause and effect.  Things don't just happen -- no matter how hard we want them to.  And there are many who cultivate that path to wisdom -- thinking wishful-thinking gets them there, so all they have to do is want it badly enough -- while taking no positive steps to increase those probabilities.  That's how the possible, becomes more probable -- or less.  In neither case is it the same, or doesn't matter.  It all matters -- none more than others -- and wishing it were not so, won't make it so.

Every generation has its own unique challenges, and the foolish, are those rewriting the past -- rather than discovering the new, and making it so.  But we try to see the whole of life through the eye of a needle -- and thinking that is all there is.  Those are the obvious competitive types -- but even more devious and undermining, are those who actually believe their own lies.  They are simply and abjectly lost -- because they don't know how to begin to find out for themselves, the truth of any matter.  And finding out, is the name of the game, what life is all about.  Even some with all the money in the world, will not be able to buy a clue.  The world is run very differently than what they thought to be true.  So while it seemed like they were on the top, shortly as was admonished, the first shall become the last, and the last, first.  You just never know when it happens -- and the first will be the last to know.  By then it is too late; all their chances have been used up.

One doesn't say this to mock the dying.  They are consumed with their own problems -- but for the living and the young, the new world awaits them -- but not simply by repeating the old ways that didn't work for anybody -- so far.  The new way has to be discovered and created -- and only such a life is unprecedentedly good.

This robust health lies beyond a single metric to measure -- which is the underlying flaw of all our previous understanding.  It merely accumulated when what was needed, was to subsume all the others in a greater, integrated understanding of the whole of life -- and not simply the accumulation of broken, fragmented pieces -- that tell us very little of the whole.  That is the new, higher understanding of what it means to be fit -- for life.  It is not about wasting the heart beats -- and thinking it will be made up some way in the future.  It all begins right now -- and where it ends, nobody knows.

That is the survival of the fit.