The other day, we drove south to eventually go east. Direction would normally mean everything, but some landscapes require detours.
Lifestyle is a similar course with multiple tethers to one’s own nostalgia and filters for the barrage of direction from the media, corporate culture, and government.
My own “healthy lifestyle” is on a detour most of the time. Sometimes I create the detour without doing much thinking of the course I’m on or the course I should be on. The stresses of my own “one step up and two steps back” approach attempts to find what might be best for me. The literature available, as well as who and how this “literature” is made available, is seemingly kept somewhere like the scene in the Wizard of Oz where we’re told ” Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.” Yes, I’m saying the information I may need could be behind the curtain. But, more importantly, what I may need to do is monitor my attention.
One of us wants to get off on some conspiracy theory about what’s behind the curtain. Me. “You’re a bad man” need not be spoken to the Wizard in the film just mentioned, as “being bad” really isn’t his cause.
I recently heard a medical doctor, speaking on the topic of nutrition, say, ” Don’t talk about it at all if you’re going to give a message, you know, that is tainted by industry influence and misunderstanding.” Therefore, it seems, no one would be able to talk about nutrition, as no one is immune to being ” tainted by industry influence and misunderstanding.”
It seems there’s no way to acquire the immunity. We are all tainted.
Maybe it’s just me, though.
I’d lost balance in my lifestyle. Never mind which part of my lifestyle caused the out of balance, this inability to center to balance caused other areas in my life to become lopsided as well.
Of course I turned to experts. But an ex is a “has been,” and a spurt is a drip under pressure. Of course, I couldn’t discover how to “fix” me all by myself. But what did I need to “find out?” Still wouldn’t it be glorious to share with family, friends, and a larger community what I’ve found?
So, what I found, and it doesn’t come off as “glorious” anymore, is fear, nostalgia, laziness, misinformation. Variations and perpetuations of these themes created by me or by others which allow us a meaningful existence cannot be cloaked under an “I’m right!” shield. This shield is not singular; it covers many industries establishing connections that, unbeknownst to me, remained off my radar. I had no suspicion of ghosts in the machine or of a wizard behind that curtain.
Now it’s as if I have become an apparition of a design that never occurred to me. How’d I let that happen? Ability or inability to make my own decisions became fallible, filled with the foibles I possess and that experts are not without.
There is a conversation happening. There are points to be made based on misinformation. We are tainted. But there are those with talents that will bring us to better understanding and more flexibility on the good life. Look in a mirror, you’ll see what I mean.