Body Month: The Myth of Moderation

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We move at a quicker pace more than any point in history.  In the rush, rush, rush of whatever it is we’re doing, we blow through meals, shirk our sleep, refuse to take time off, and make new to-do lists the moment we complete one. We dismiss leisure as a sign of weakness or laziness.  But now intuition has been supplanted by what “experts” say.  It’s why I don’t really want to be referred to as an expert, even though some people have given me that monicker when I’ve worked with them.  If anything, I bring people inside themselves, getting them to listen within, to rediscover their own intuition about how to be in their bodies.

If we crowd out our intuition and our listening with more and more action, we inevitably break down.  Maybe not immediately, but someday it all catches up to us when the body can no longer take the stress we’re placing on it.  Whether its overwork, lack of leisure, or environmental toxins via our diet, illness creeps up when we fail to listen.  And then we begin the long slog up the hill, with the missteps and false starts that come with it.

I didn’t listen to my body for many years.  I burned the 3 a.m. oil and ate garbage.  As a result, I developed food sensitivities that made toilet trips huge daily events.  Wheat had been attacking my immune system, but I didn’t stop long enough to pay attention.  Headaches, stiffness, and bellyaches came and went.  I popped aspirins and antacids, suppressing symptoms rather than noticing what they were trying to tell me.

Because I wouldn’t listen, they got louder.  Mild headaches became debilitating, body stiffness became exhaustion, bellyaches became races to the bathroom.  More pills, more ills.  As I learned about nourishment, the food supply, and holistic health, I slowed down and opened my ears to what my body was telling me.  I dropped the wheat.  A little extra weight I couldn’t shake dropped with it.  And many symptoms subsided, not entirely, but enough to make me feel better.

I replaced wheat with corn products, like tortillas.  Since I’d replaced the wheat and gluten products, I assumed I’d automatically be better.  The corn, albeit non-GMO, increased in my diet, which likely disrupted my healthy omega-6 to omega-3 balance, promoting inflammation.  Headaches, stiffness, and stomach distress erupted.  Each time I had corn, I noticed I didn’t feel so hot, but maybe gluten had found its way into my system.  I had more corn and the villi in my small intestine revolted.  Can you hear me now?

No.  Popcorn?  Stomach ache.  Tortilla?  Headache.  Good ole corn?  Intestinal distress.  More bathroom visits.  More questions.

Two weeks ago, I bid corn farewell.  The couple times corn showed up in something via starch or another ingredient in a sauce, my belly imploded.  But without corn, my stomach has calmed right down.  No distress.  A lot more energy.  A feeling of balance.

All because I listened.

Information is flung at us left and right.  The Inadequacy Industry has the loudest voice.  Via spokesmen from their sub-industries – Big Sugar, Big Agriculture, Improperly Grown Animals – and their apologists – TV “experts” and the Academy for Nutrition and Dietetics – they advocate for a mythical creature called “moderation.”  Sugar is toxic to the human body, so how much should we have in moderation?  Improperly grown animals give us tremendous amounts of Omega-6s that contribute to the inflammation that is the basis of American dietary diseases.  How much of that should we have?  What is a moderate quantity of wheat I should ingest even though it is poisonous to me?

In order to make money, those with the most money and the loudest voices never advocate for extreme caution, for elimination over moderation.  I moderated my wheat intake and it made my symptoms worse.  I moderated my corn intake and my body got mad at me.  Only elimination curtailed illness.  For the Inadequacy Industry, elimination is the purest form of evil, for profits disappear.  It is never the answer.  Often, those of us with sensitivities will be told “it’s all in your head.”  Furthermore, people who buy into the cultural messaging will pick us apart for having a restrictive diet.  We might be “boring” or “picky” or “obsessive.”  We might also just be trying to maintain health.

Our country has great illness.  This illness is directly tied to corporate-government collusion running the food supply and messaging about food and diet.  Like magicians, the Inadequacy Industry supplies enough misdirection to keep us guessing about the best way to feed and take care of ourselves.  But we can counteract this by turning off the volume of the external voices and tuning to the one coming from within.

If we listen to our bodies, we will know.  If we listen to our bodies, we will cure.  If we listen to our bodies, we won’t need to listen to anyone else.

Moderation is a myth and harmful.

My body told me that.  A host of organizations wealthier than my body’s intuition have tried to tell me otherwise.  As they will do to you.

Trust your body.

It’s wise if you let it be.

Body Month: As the Baby Embodies

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How do you sit?  Are you hunched?  Do you feel a twinge in your neck or do your legs go numb?

How do you stand when you wash the dishes?  Does your lower back feel strained?  Do you feel pretty good?

When you go for a run, do your legs ache?  Are you tight?  Or are you limber?

When you head out to an event, do you find yourself pulling in your belly so you look differently?  Do you catch your breath, because belly breathing would just look weird?

For the women, do you wear shoes that angle your toes one, two, or more inches to the ground?

Our bodies take a beating and worse, a berating.  We pull in the belly, because we fear being called fat.  Fashion tells us to harm our feet.  And by paying little attention to how we sit and stand, we contort our trunk so that it becomes impossible to straighten up without feeling like we’re slung onto a kebab skewer.

And then there’s my daughter.  All babies really.

When she sits (a new skill) her head aligns with her hips as the natural curve of her skeleton makes her look arrow straight.  Her legs, uncrossed, keep the circulation moving from head to toe.  She brings things up toward her head in order to look at them, rather than careening toward the floor – no neck craning or eye straining.  Inherently, she knows how to sit.

As we age, we unlearn sitting even though we never really “learned” how to do it in the first place.

Remarkably, sit happened.  Out of the blue, she steadied herself without our help.  Evolutionarily, she knew what to do.  Shortly after, crawl happened, too.  We didn’t teach her to crawl.  I can say she likely never saw someone crawl in her eight months.  But her body knew to do it.  A few days later, my daughter pulled herself into a standing position, learning by falling and getting right back up.  Watching her can exhaust me.  Over and over and over, up, down, up, down.  Our bodies are coded to do this.  Somewhere along the way, we lose it.

With the blank slate of a newborn, we can observe human embodiment of the skin, bones, and tissues they will inhabit in this lifetime.  From those early flails and the mush of untoned musculature, rendering the head barely mobile, to the first push up from the ground to roll over to sitting and standing.  The body knows what it’s doing.  Only when we start to know more in our heads do we seemingly overrule the body with our brain.

A cool cat struts a certain way.  Suddenly our moves are awkward and we have to walk differently.  Someone influential lounges on the floor, so we copy her, beginning the steady curve downward.  In our society, standing straight up actually looks odd, doesn’t it?  Here’s why, if our body has the head and hips aligned as a baby’s, the belly will naturally protrude outward (as a baby’s).  Check out your local yoga teacher and you’ll see what I mean.  They are toned and muscular and still the belly pushes forward, relaxed.

Most of us hunch and suck so as to look skinny, so afraid our we of being perceived as fat.  When we suck in, we make it hard to breathe, while also affecting the muscles of our midsection.  When we hunch, our necks, faces, and shoulders become perpetually engaged.  This turns our attempts at regaining optimal posture into a Herculean task.

Back to the baby.  She doesn’t give her belly one thought.  She’s standing!  Ain’t that great?!  Head and hips still lined up.  Belly out.  A perfectly happy little human.

Maybe it’s good she has no language at this point, because she cannot put thoughts into her head that she looks fat or needs to act like someone else.  Indeed, perhaps we form language later so our bodies at least have a good start, a time for true embodiment prior to a lifetime of running away from it.

Hopefully we’ll send our daughter messages that can prevent future pain and expenditure to regain the form and function she displayed so effortlessly, that we all once did really, back in her earliest days.

Let’s live in our bodies rather than running away from them.  Like a baby does.

Body Month: Breastfeeding and the Public Square

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A clergy member would say I’m watching my wife “strip.”

Breastfeeding is an important part of child development and mother-baby bonding.  The baby’s cry promotes milk letdown.  When my own daughter was born, she was placed on my wife’s belly, blindly working her way up to my wife’s breast.  In that moment, the intimate connection solidified.  Breast milk is a child’s best immune system builder, a baby’s perfect nourishment, and that which helps the best makeup of beneficial bacteria to colonize the gut.  If a mother is able to produce milk, the act of breastfeeding warrants support, encouragement, and effort.  If she cannot, she should not be vilified for that.

One wouldn’t think that breastfeeding would be controversial.  Then again, this is the United States of America, where most natural things generate contempt while synthetics and damaging products get by with nary a peep.  Witness Bisphenol A, a carcinogenic substance found in plastics that is banned for use in baby bottles in Europe and Canada.  BPA is linked to obesity, thyroid and nervous system disruption, and improper development of male and female reproductive systems.  The FDA buckled to industry, as is its wont, clearing the path for BPA to contaminate foods for years to come.  The outrage regarding the FDA’s ruling was non-existent.  Breastfeeding, though?  Aha!  Time to threaten jail if you dare feed your child in public.

The news has had an amazing amount of negative stories about nursing.  A woman was thrown out of a courtroom for breastfeeding.  Moms who pump milk at work apparently make less money over a five year span than other employees.  In this article, lost time from the desk to provide optimal nourishment to growing babies is cited as one concern.  (I couldn’t find any article that showed smokers who take frequent breaks lost wages similarly, which makes you think.)  Random folks have raised a stink about breastfeeding, threatening women with arrest on charges of indecent exposure.  These range from government security, mall security, a bus driver, flight attendants, and at some national chains.  A couple religious officials have compared breastfeeding moms to strippers and pornography.  Apparently, Jesus was bottle fed.

In nearly all those states, laws demand that nursing moms have the right to breastfeed in any public or private space, meaning the mothers in question had their rights violated by their fellow citizens.  In Michigan, site of the courtroom controversy and bus incident, the law exempts breastfeeding from any claim of indecency.  The court bailiff had a right to do what he did, but it doesn’t mean he was right for doing it.  The female bus driver (astonishing that many of those harassing nursing moms are women) made a lewd statement to the nursing mom about her “titty.”

Isn’t it time to grow up?

One preacher considers this to be pornographic.

The female breast is utilitarian, made up of fat, lymph nodes, ducts, connective tissue, and sacs that can hold milk.  Externally, the nipple allows nourishing milk to flow to a baby from the mother.  The baby requires access to the breast on demand at a young age and in intervals as she or he grows older.  Have the breastfeeding critics ever seen a hungry baby?  They know one thing – HUNGER!  The key is to get the baby food as quickly as possible.  For the nursing mom, this means exposing the breast to allow the child to eat.  To accuse a nursing mom of being a stripper or pornographic demonstrates a severe lack of understanding about what goes through a mother’s mind when the moment the hungry baby screams.

First, the mom wants to soothe the baby.  Second, the last thing the mother thinks about is being sexy.  Third, when about to feed, the mother is about to put her breast and nipple into a potentially painful vise that were the baby translucent would frighten even the most rock-ribbed human.  (Watch a breast pump in action.  Then add teeth and angst.)  Stripping?  Pornography?  Threatening arrest?  Detainment?  Ouster?  Really?

Really.

That utilitarian breast has been hyper-sexualized in our society.  Witness an indigenous Amazonian woman to see that the breast is not inherently sexual.  Those cultures have their own body taboos – one group would never deign to show up in public without a fibrous string around their waist, the only thing on them.  But in the macro sense, just looking outside our environs will show that the sexual breast is a creation of our mind, not a factual entity.  In that it can provide sexual stimulation, the breast is no different from the neck, the foot, or the ear.  No one is demanding we all use earmuffs or go to jail.

Body taboos are a bit silly, based more in fear and misinformation than in any qualification of fact.  Even if we agree to cover the regions devoted in part to sexuality, it takes an awful lot of logical contortions to have that include the breast.  Male breasts do not require coverage even when they look remarkably similar to female breasts.  That punctures a hole in the argument, because enlarged fat deposits obviously don’t change the rules for men.  All that’s different, then, is the ability to lactate.  I have not once heard lactation as the reason that female breasts must legally remain covered or be deemed obscene.  Therefore, the story we have created about the breast being sexual and sexually charged, the creation lodged in the collective imagination, is what we have left.  That’s a pretty flimsy reason.  It’s a prohibition based on a figment.

In a largely rational society, it should not survive scrutiny.  But our society isn’t particularly rational.  We base our laws, it seems, on made up definitions and on profitability.  So, the breast is banned, but BPA proceeds full steam ahead.  Adding to the silliness, the female breast is only granted a reprieve when feeding the child, but not in every state and not with the publicity that prevents the absurdity of the anti-nursing crowd.

Due to a host of policies that are decidedly family-unfriendly in the United States – from maternity leave to health care to union-busting – mother-baby bonding time is truncated, women are forced out of the home during those early nurturing months, and few families have the ability to keep a parent home and survive in the American economy.  Unlike in generations past, women are going to be out and about more with their babies when on-demand feeding will erupt at any moment.  Women and families have been forced to adapt to this anti-family atmosphere, so the rest of society had best suck it up and adapt as well.

The breast isn’t scandalous.  It isn’t sexual.  And it is the best thing a baby can see each day.  If someone is disturbed by the exposed breast during a feeding, the mother should not suffer due to the viewer’s confusion.  The offense will always be in the eye of the beholder.

If offended, avert your eyes.

Feed on, Moms!

Body Month: The American Body Taboo and Its Consequences

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May is “Body Month” on this website, with topics devoted to our cultural relationship with the human body, body image, and how we live within our skin.  Stay tuned for articles about breastfeeding rights, the way a baby learns to inhabit her skin, and the myth of moderation.  As with each year, in honor of the first Saturday in May being World Naked Gardening Day, the blog discusses the American body taboo.

When my in-laws visited Maui, I encouraged them to try out Little Beach, a clothing optional area on the south coast of the island.  While technically existing outside the law, this small slice of paradise is generally left alone.  ”No, no.  That’s okay,” they told me even after I reminded them that they would be 6,000 miles away from anyone they knew.  The first time I went, I had my own spell of trepidation which subsided after the sun, sand, and sea connected me deeply to the earth.  Aside from the years of cultural conditioning, especially as a New Englander – home to witch trials and dour Puritanism – that which prevents us from living naturally, whether on that beach or in our food choices or when picking out a house, little was different from me and a person inside a National Geographic.  It was a taste of freedom.

My daughter loves being naked.  When her diaper gets changed, my mother has called it “Nudie-Tudie Town.”  The moment she’s out of her containments, she starts kicking and cooing, having a grand old time.  And as sure as clockwork, when we start to re-robe her, the wails come flying out, as if to say, “No, no.  That’s not okay.”

In some Amazonian cultures that have not been fettered by the Western world, indigenous people are nude, no matter the age or gender.  Their sexual mores prohibit them from engaging in intercourse nearby, so they find privacy for those purposes.  They inherently “get” that the human body is not the sexual body and that there is a place for each.  In the United States in particular, sexuality is conflated with the human body.  Mixed messages abound to leave everyone confused, ashamed, and on edge.

Let’s break it down:  The message often is that sex is bad and the body equals sex.  Clothing companies then tailor their outfits and their advertisements to enhance sexuality (hello, Inadequacy Industry!), so the pants are very tight or the shirts are cut low.  We then tell teens that they should not be wearing these things, nor thinking about sex, but that which is available is emphasizing what has been equated to sex, which combined with natural hormones emphasizes sexuality in the teenaged mind.  It’s like saying, “Go look behind the curtain,” and “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” in the same breath.

In the advertisements, the models are often overly muscled, if they’re guys, and wafer thin, if they’re girls.  Because everyone wants to be liked, and because the ultimate goal is to find someone to partner off with, the message is that our bodies must head in those directions.  Exercise injuries and eating disorders abound, all to have the body that will make you attractive, because… the body equals sex and only sex here in the U.S.

In the age of mass media, the message seems to compound exponentially with each passing year.  Thus, with a four hundred year head start, the last fifty have been adding on like dog years.

No, the body does not equal sex.  Huh?  How do you mean?  Sex is but one activity.  Cultures that are exposed make the distinction.

We’re a society without distinctions.  And when that happens, people get made fun of or put in fearful positions.

The word “nudist” conjures up pejoratives that demean people who have declared independence from cultural programming.  Used for comic relief in entertainment, discussed derisively in news segments, or causing laughter in conversation, the clothing optional human is one of the last minority cultural groups (one that spent $400 million in demographically targeted travel a decade ago) where it is okay to openly poke fun and discriminate.  Many people who identify with that term are afraid to be “outed,” because they fear they might lose their jobs or be subjected to harassment and ridicule.

The reason, of course, is because of our cultural history of equating the naked human with the sexual human or the uncivilized human.  If you don’t mind not wearing clothes, it goes, then obviously you suffer from depravity.  Subjected to sociological studies over the years, the practice of nudism has been found to be like any other segment of society.  This culture takes the potential for untoward behavior seriously, weeding out potential characters who themselves equate nakedness with sexuality and are looking for easy pickings.  Consider that last decade, Representative Mark Foley hammered on a nudist camp for teens as being dangerous and a potential haven for sexual predators, even though no incident had ever occurred in the history of the program.  Shortly after his crusade fell short, he was drummed out of the House of Representatives in disgrace for trying to entice Congressional pages into sexual situations and sending them lewd messages.

The connection that convinces people their bodies are inherently bad has created lasting damage.  Self-hatred has become the norm as self-respect has dissipated.  People spend their limited time and treasure attempting to live up to some sort of ideal rather than reveling in the whole, beautiful human they are in the moment.  As a person who had a body image problem, I contend that self-hatred via the non-stop thumping of the shame/perfection message leads to our over- and under-eating, inability to pick properly grown foods to maintain health, and subsequently the “Western” dietary diseases.  Only through self-respect can we find the will and means to dedicate ourselves to maintaining health.  One defense would be to drive a stake in the Puritanical vampire that refuses to go away.

We can choose to honor naturalness rather than condemn it, for that condemnation builds a prison in our own minds that manages to divide us from the vessels that carry us through the day.  Skin is skin and just that.  The rest of the story is a trick of the mind.  Such tricks separate us from our humanity and from our beingness, for beneath our titles, our wealth, our geography, that is what we all are: human beings.

After 400 years, let’s construct normalcy, a relationship between our mind and our body that jettisons manmade prurience, replacing it with honor, dignity, and love.

On the Occasion of Our Missing Cat

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As a rainy springtime Nor’easter headed toward New England, I felt sad for our cat, Ludo.  Up north on baby furlough with our two other cats, he went outside a week ago to fulfill his catness and has yet to return.  Decent weather would have enhanced any adventure he had last week, but downpours might be a bit too much.  Perhaps he’ll remember his survival techniques from his years as a stray.

Ludo helped my wife, Sara, during a transitional phase in her life.  Working from home, Sara had him as a constant companion and cuddly buddy.  She adopted him about a year before she adopted me.  When I met Ludo, he was a morbidly obese cat who couldn’t maintain his weight on his hind legs, dragging about Sara’s apartment in full waddle.  Unlike many cats, Ludo ate what was in his dish.  If more arrived, he ate that too.  Sara’s previous experiences with cats told her to keep the dish full and he’d come and go.  Ludo never left, always wanting more, some of that stray coming out yet again.

He didn’t like me much when I took over his supper dish, but soon he became less doorstop and more cat, with a spring in his step, because he could actually take his steps.  A few years later, I sat up with Ludo and lost an hour due to daylight savings when we thought he might succumb to pain and pathos when crystals were in his urine.  For male cats, this is especially painful since the trip out is cramped.  Feeding him water from an eye dropper for five hours, I managed to keep him going through the night until we could get him to the vet.  Another dietary change and he was in tip-top shape.

Ludo packed on the pounds again this year, so the outdoor time would serve him well.  Apparently, the three years being cooped in Maryland led him astray last week.

We love our pets, perhaps inordinately when compared to the respect and accord we provide our fellow humans.  We make a bargain with our animal friends, promising to attend to their needs while they provide us with unconditional love.  In a world of harsh judgments, dishonesty, and loneliness, pets come through each day.  Sometimes they might feel like our only friend.  We know the heartbreak in store whenever we invest time and money into these animals, because we are all but guaranteed to outlive them.  Yet, we strike the deal every time, don’t we?  Banking up on kisses or purrs in the early years before allowing the inevitable to take place.  It’s why many people can’t simply replace a pet once they’re gone, for their individual personality draws us in at first.  It seems silly, sure, but have a pet before you confirm your opinion.

On social media, I’ve been following the daily heartbreaking countdown of another lost cat, currently on day 39.  A friend marked a year since her beloved dog passed away.  My Dad still claims his childhood cat, Mama Kitty, was the best pet ever bestowed on humanity.  That was about 50 years ago!  And after the Michael Vick dog fighting revelations, the late Senator Robert Byrd proclaimed a moving tribute to his dog on the Senate floor.  Our pets matter.

Certainly, some people take their animal love too far.  Pet psychics, psychologists, spas, and expensive groomers are part of the estimated $57,000,000,000 (that’s billion… with a B) pet services industry in the United States (as of 2011).  We expect that number to grow this year and the next.  I’ve found that a warm lap, a fuzzy blanket, food, water, and “toilet” are really all animals want.  As long as we remember they’re animals, not spoiled rich people, we will keep the human-pet relationship from spiraling out of control, or at least from spiraling further.

A few weeks ago, Ludo had a gastrointestinal issue.  The veterinarian said that it seemed to be a surface problem, but we cannot know for sure if something more severe was going on inside.  Given his rebound after treatment, the prohibitively priced tests did not seem warranted.  With his history of health hiccups, maybe something had deeply affected him and maybe he has gone to a private place as many animals do.  Should we not see him again, that feels to me like the most peaceful fate.

But we’re only 8 days in to his adventure.  I hope he’s battled wolves, captured falcons for his dinner, and swum the Connecticut River, taking respite from his grandparents’ dog and his younger feline friend.  Maybe he’ll return today or sometime soon.  Wherever he is and whatever his fate, he will go down in the annals of catdom as having lived a good life.  And if you see this orange puff galumphing about the northeast, please do let us know.

Animals have a way of helping us to see what’s good in ourselves.  That makes it hard not to know their whereabouts.  Harder still to say goodbye.

Five Ways to Celebrate Earth Day!

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A while back, I watched an All in the Family episode where Archie’s daughter and son-in-law bemoaned pollution, contaminated water, and lack of quality food.  Though 40 years had passed, we all know they could have been talking about America in 2012.  While pollution has reduced in certain respects, waterways continue to be destroyed by dumping and strip mining, the air remains assaulted by poisons, and the food supply is a petri dish of chemicals, mutations, and disease.  New ways continue to be invented to destroy the planet so that very, very, very few people can profit.  Welcome to the 42nd annual Earth Day!

Earth Day is Sunday, April 22, though I propose we rename it.  Let’s call it Home Day.  You see, we need Earth more than Earth needs us and she is belching us off the planet in direct response to the years of abuse we have heaped on her.  Sadly, people who have lived in Earth-honoring ways – island peoples, Amazonians – have been caught in the crossfire, while those who pollute receive cover from governments and their agencies.  If we see a spike in Lyme Disease this year, will anyone hold the significant scientific minority of climate deniers – the ones who speak for the oil companies so they can proceed with impunity – responsible, since the ticks didn’t have their usual die off during the warmer-than-usual winter?

But what if we call it Home Day?  Might that make a difference?  People don’t like their homes being attacked.  They bristle at anyone coming onto their property.  But a house is a temporary structure mounted directly on the planet, our true home.  We can move from state-to-state or around the world and still we remain on Planet Earth.  A tornado or tsunami might strike down the structure and if we’re lucky enough to survive, we can still find a new dwelling and it must be placed on Planet Earth.  Earth is not an abstract concept, or at least it shouldn’t be.  Without it, we have no place to live.  So why do we acquiesce to the moneyed-few who want to make our home uninhabitable?  Why do we allow our elected officials to do the same?  They might be blinded by prestige and dollar signs, but that hasn’t trickled down to the vast majority of humanity.  Let’s make Earth Day Home Day and start raising a stink about how a select few are trespassing and destroying our home, making it difficult to enjoy a peaceful existence.

Five Ways to Celebrate Earth Day

  • Rename It Home Day: And start acting like our home is at stake whenever we hear something fishy come from industry.
  • Plant Something: A tree, a shrub, ornamental flowers, or best of all, edible plants.
  • Sit in Nature, That Is All: Find a rock by a brook or a tree in a meadow or park.  Sit there without books, computers, phones, friends, or pets.  Observe the mammals, birds, and insects around you.  Feel the air hit your face, arms, and whatever else is exposed.  Sniff it.  What do you smell?  Is it clean?  Is it industrial?  Look around you at the rest of the natural landscape.  Notice that you aren’t bigger than it.  In fact, you are small.  Remember that you are a part of nature, not its ruler.  Act the part.
  • Eat Real Food, Nourished by Ma Earth: If Twinkies grew from the ground like a beet or fell off trees like a coconut or came from the water like a fish or fed on pasture like a cow, I’d tell everyone to go have a Twinkie!  The Twinkie is a chemical concoction full of synthetic laboratory inventions, refined sugars, and even mined materials.  In part, it might be of the Earth, but it sure ain’t food!  If this Sunday is the only day you do this, pick only foods that contain one ingredient for each meal – a cucumber, a beef (grass-finished as nature intended), a blackberry, a mango, a cabbage, an oat, water – and avail yourself of the bounty that comes from properly-raised foods nourished by the earth.  [Warning: Could Be Habit Forming!]
  • Commit to Your Home: For the majority of humanity to benefit from the health, happiness, and abundance Earth wants to give us, we must embody the spirit of Earth Day every day.  Earth Day isn’t a confessional where we reveal our sins and a few slogans will let us go on to continue our cherished habits, though that’s how we treat it.  Sunday:  “Oh, it’s Earth Day!  Let’s go to some rally or garden event!”  Monday:  “…and an order of large fries.”  If we want to ensure that this home will continue to be hospitable, let’s make the celebrations permanent, prioritizing the Earth Home over the dwellings we erect.  Just because we can chemically treat a lawn, doesn’t mean we should.  The water will thank you.  Flora and fauna will thank you.  And our bodies will be thankful, too.  That is but one example.

Earth Day is this Sunday.  Home Day is every day.  Celebrate each as though our lives depend on them.

They do.

How to Create a Well Society

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I’ve begun writing this on a sunny Sunday afternoon with a light breeze whipping warm air through the apartment.  Sara, Kalia, and I have already taken a walk around the downtown area near the farmers market.  Since our fridge is pretty full, we picked up properly-raised bacon and onion scallions.  The day has been easy, as we share but one full day off per week in general.  We’ve talked to our families via video, a golf match plays in the background, and our crock pot has just finished slow cooking our properly-raised beef roast, carrots, sweet potatoes, and onions.  What a great day!

It’s the type of day I wish we could have often, the type which I feel as though I’m on vacation, when time slows down and everything seems easy.  I would wish this day on anyone, including my worst enemy.  Maybe they’d then relax.  We don’t relax enough – working, working, working – defining ourselves as trying and working “hard.”  If people don’t like work, they’re called “lazy.”  If we want to grab a view of meaningful work, check out an unfettered Amazonian tribe.  They work to ensure the day’s survival of the community: hunting, fishing, raising the young, teaching tradition, healing in ceremony, and enjoying play.  In fact, much of the day is spent in leisure.  Our work, often, deals with toiling at desks for forty hours, perhaps many more, ensuring that a select few people remain wealthy.  Maybe that is why so many people are miserable at their jobs: they lack true meaning, do little to add to the community, and help few people.  I don’t know many people who actually enjoy their jobs.

We define ourselves by our achievements and accomplishments.  We allow others to identify what constitutes an achievement or accomplishment.  Today, both families cheered Kalia on as she got up on her knees or stood with assistance.  For adults, getting out of bed could be an accomplishment, but the cheering audience has long abandoned their seats.  We only take notice if a degree is granted, a test score given, awards appear, or if work has status or a raise attached.  We ask, “What do you do?” when we meet someone, rather than “How do you do?”  Meeting someone becomes a resume-gathering scheme.  We build a caste system of which job matters once we have that resume in hand.  I talked a lot to the custodian in my sophomore-year dorm.  One hallmate admonished me, “Why do you talk to him all the time?  He’s not going to get you anywhere.”  He reminded me of my grandfather.  Didn’t that deserve a cheer?  Isn’t being human enough?

Kalia smiles at me, bends over in full-bodied glee when I come into the room after being away for a while.  She reaches out to Sara with both arms when her mommy returns from her day job.  She loves us unconditionally.  We love her because we love her, no preconditions required.  At what point do people attach such reasons to the love that we give to another?  When does it become an exchange of goods, an “I love you, because,” an “I love you, if?”  What suffering comes from living not knowing if anyone loves us for who we are, not for something we’ve done.

I’ve taken the time to discuss how government, industry, and others who collude go to great lengths and spend tremendous amounts of money to dupe us out of our common sense, making us seek tangible objects to fill intangible needs.  I’ve devoted many words to exposing these links.  Interestingly, fewer words need to be spoken about how to create a well society.  Probably because they resonate with the intuition the outsiders attempt to stifle.

Here are some ideas:

  • Love for the sake of loving.  No conditions.
  • Work takes up a lot of time.  Follow a path that inspires you, hopefully one that benefits people and the planet.
  • Give others dignity simply because they are human.
  • Base respect on who one is, not the titles they hold.
  • Plan your week around leisure.  Star your to-do list where play time is listed.  Count the stars and add more.
  • Celebrate yourself and others because they exist.  Don’t just wait for a trophy presentation.
  • Eat properly-grown food.  For this there are no exceptions.
  • If you’re about to pull the slingshot on Angry Birds, drop what you’re doing and go outside!
  • Breathe deeply so that your belly sticks out.
  • When loving unconditionally, save some for yourself.

The cultural entanglements that keep us from expressing our whole being daily are great, which is why wellness jobs are exploding these days.  But even now, not all workers in wellness are equal.  In the previous installment, I showed how the industries that conspire to keep us ill have co-opted wellness “experts.”  The genetic modifiers have encoded their mad science as “sustainability.”  While words mean something, more money is spent to render them meaningless and useless.  So far, this has worked.

A mass movement away from the nine-to-five or -six or -seven world has yet to happen.  Insistence on dignity for all has not swept the majority.  Convivial community has not supplanted, “I got mine!”  And we’ve turned childhood into a morass of tests and competitions, teaching the youngest among us the language of “winners” and “losers” designed to maintain the status quo, to keep the human spirit at bay.

Still, we must unwind and return ease to where there is dis-ease and disease, whether on our own, with our families, or with the aid of specialists.  For behind that rock, we find true health, one that unites our mind with our heart, our body with our planet, and our dreams with our realities.