To honor the request of my local Physical Fitness Expert (wife) that I make some effort to stave off decrepitude, I’ve begun doing pushups and squats in the morning, in addition to walking on the beach. I’ve been getting “body tired” like I haven’t been in years, which is fine. I’m not complaining.
Some of my happiest years were when I ran cross-country — probably something to do with the proliferation of serotonin uptake inhibitors in my teenage bloodstream. Physical activity is a major tonic for the mind, which I believe cramps up into a twisted, stiff knot without it. And my mind, when it cramps up, which is like every few seconds, has major tendencies toward negativism.
It manufactures stuff like, “Why take up any course of self improvement when war could break out at any moment? The dollar could be totally devalued and we’ll be in a financial crisis with wheelbarrows full of useless currency notes like Germany in the early 20th century. The oil will run out and we’ll all be scrambling looking for food because the grocery stores will close and you won’t be able to use money anyway because it will have no value. Nobody knows how to grow food or even hunt. The modern industrial economy is a horrifyingly failed experiment which is driving all those who participate in it towards extinction,” and on and on and on. Time to go for a walk.
Have you seen the BBC’s Wild China video series? It shows people living in Tibet and other out-of-the-way places in China under all kinds of (to my mind) terrifyingly austere crazy tundra situations. These people know what to do when it comes to practical living. There’s one shot of an eighty-year-old lady smoking a clay pipe while zooming across a ravine on a zip line with a pig tied to her waist on her way to market.
Another scene shows some rural fishermen with trained cormorants. They paddle their bamboo pontoon boats to the middle of a pond, loop threads around their pet cormorants’ throats so they won’t swallow fish, and send the cormorants diving. They catch fish in their beaks and bring them back to the fishermen, who say, “thank you very much,” in Chinese and put the fish in a bucket. The cormorants keep diving back down to nab more fishy fish, until finally the nooses come off and the cormorants get fed. And this tradition has been passed down since practically forever.
That’s pretty cool, I think. So, how am I supposed to live? What kind of wisdom will I be able to pass down that might be of practical use to hyper-mental worrywarts of the future?
Well if the world does go to hell in a hand-basket as you seem to think, there won’t be anybody to pass wisdom to. So stop worrying and relax: it’ll all die with you.
wanna worry ? the powers that be have to keep cooling mechanisms run by electricity in place for at least 20,000 years for any nuclear unspent fuel rods they have made. if they stop we get a hydrogen explosion. in any of the 100,s of friendly nuke plants
in NA. then there is the spent fuel rods which have to stay contained for 1000,s of years with out corroding. then there are the decaying pipes in the 100,s of nuke plants which need replacing for as long as there is nuclear fuel. Apparently Brazil only has one. that is in S america. may not be a bad place to go ? Then adi daivic, earthquakes, floods, tusnamis, huracaines, etc, which can destroy partially or totally any nuke plant anytime. Aren’t we glad as tax payers that we have built all these nuke plants with our money.