Currently our average lifespan is 79 years and average healthspan is 63 (The World Health Organization has come up with a healthspan indicator, HALE, healthy life expectancy). This means we can expect to be unhealthy, in a chronic state of degeneration for about 16 years. How do you want to spend the last 20% of your life? If you’re past 32, you’re on the backside of your healthspan. What will you do about that last 20%, which is going to be around 192 months, 70,000 days? When we’re young, we sacrifice health for wealth; when we’re old we will sacrifice wealth for health. But are these sacrifices producing the good we hope for?
If you don’t prioritize the wellness of your last decade or two, you will likely spend a lot of time and money on managing your diseases (mental and physical ones). And it may involve your children/ family members spending much time and money to support you as well. They may be happy to but is that really what you want?
So where to start?
Here’s a simple outline: (if you have time, check out the links)
None of that is rocket science yet they are easily dismissed because we’re too busy, too tired, and possibly too unhappy. We know what helps improve our health but we lack motivation.
What’s at the root of this?
Underlying beliefs, rules, and narratives.
We lack motivation for greater health when we neglect our true selves and live according to unexamined defaults. When we’re driven by fear and others’ expectations/ influences on us, there is little to no attention given to our wholeness which unifies our head, heart, and body.
Conflicts, relationship difficulties, moral failures, defeats to our grandiosity, and even enemies help reveal deeper problems. They are necessary mirrors that can direct us toward healthy examination of our thoughts and feelings. And if we learn and persevere in this inner work with unconditional love, we experience freedom, clarity, and joy. Unconditional love fosters release from lies that cause us to fight reality. And reality is the truest manifestation of God because reality rules and the more we discover it and align with it, we find peace and freedom.
So it boils down to a lack of truthful examination of our interior that causes lack of motivation for greater health and wholeness. And why is this so common and prevalent? It involves grief; grieving the loss of false narratives that we’ve held onto out of fear, believing at a deep level that if we lose that narrative, we lose ourselves. But this is far from the truth; when we lose these deceptions, we gain what is true, real, and eternal: abundant, liberating, life and love.
Quoting Vision, “What is grief if not love persevering.” Grieving is very hard but if we don’t grieve, it’s an indication that we’re giving up on love and simply existing without it. We then proceed to make up our own concepts and definitions of love. Essentially the heart is killed off and we create systems that perpetuate meaningless sacrifices and suffering for ourselves and others.
Weeping/ grief/ tears cleanse our perspective/ perception to see clearly ie. stop looking for blame but rather surrender to forgiveness, which is the release from narratives that drive fear and pain.
“When we reach our lowest point we’re open to greatest change.” Aang, the last Airbender
God in Christ, identifying with all people, participated in our deepest sufferings. When we find our identity in Him, participating in our lowest points rather than denying/ avoiding them, we are open to greatest change.
When we move towards our suffering with unconditional loving inquiry/ examination, we can outgrow our small untrue selves and become more whole as we were made to be.
Great suffering and great love are ultimate crises for the ego. When the two come together in us, our ego and all of its oppressive thoughts let go its death grip on us and we are free to share in the never ending peace, freedom and love of God.
The liberating wisdom of unconditional love out of egoic oppression and conforming consciousness is Christ, the universal ordering, disordering and reordering of the cosmos. Truly redemptive people emerge when suffering, love, and life are defined by the clarity of truth (healthy examination of one’s thoughts and feelings) and grace (unconditional acceptance of them).
Commitment to clarifying our interior gives greater courage. We need this courageous discipline to let go of today’s urgencies that make us too busy, tired, and unhappy. Then we can prioritize things that will increase our healthspan and start investing in reshaping today and tomorrow.