The promise of robot house cleaners, flying cars and a life seamlessly integrated with technology, which empties our work calendars and leaves ample time for pursuits of hedonic leisure, was a lie. Or at least it was a painfully inaccurate prediction of social behaviour almost at the quarter point of this century.
Once we can secure safe shelter and sustenance, the basics of living, we can look to elevate our minds and bodies to a higher place of well-being beyond simple survival.
Right now, the 4,852 communication satellites wrapping the earth like tightly wound strings of Christmas lights, and the 600 million or so blogs regurgitating and re-regurgitating information on the internet (without filters or fact-checkers) are making life infinitely more complicated. Wellness of mind and spirit has been tangled in the often mindless mental mega-clutter of our multiple screen lives.
The incessant chatter of digital life needs to be deliberately reduced and replaced with a more quiet mind to review all your thoughts and feelings, which could be helping, or possibly sabotaging, chances of wellness. An internal life to ponder our opportunities, ideas and possibilities of good mental hygiene is important.
Healthy relationships with the community, our family and friends, and the deeper psychological and spiritual places inside ourselves, are basic ingredients for wellness.
I experienced years of pathologically negative and self-harming, continuously bleak thinking patterns. That being said, my new ideas and plans of living well involve lucidity of thought and, hopefully, a clarity of the mind to express my needs and ideas in an assertive but empathetic manner.
I didn’t live well with other humans, generally. So, understanding there requires a balance of my needs and a conscious kindness when they overlap with the needs of others was the first step toward living well for me.
It’s definitely easier said than done, but thoughts really do create reality. Harnessing the power of your thoughts to create wellness in life is challenging but possible. I am not there yet, however, enjoying the process is good advice for a simple, well-lived life, as well.
Everyone has a unique version of wellness and, therefore, would need a specialized plan to achieve it. There are universal methods and ancient wisdom dating back thousands of years to achieve a balanced healthy life.
Yoga and meditation are good examples of ancient practices that stood the test of time and are invaluable to living well today in our modern age. Feng Shui is an ancient science and art which originated 4,000 BCE in China. It involves the placement of objects in our home to inspire wellness.
From ancient China to IKEA, information for living well is everywhere when we look.
Living well means, at its source, thinking well. Thinking well, to my surprise, means accepting and processing negative ideas which threaten my established idea of my life itself.
If I could distill all ideas and thoughts that could clear a path toward wellness into three words, those three words would be: simplify, simplify and simplify.
Robert Skender is a qathet region freelance writer and health commentator.
