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In order to really live we have to die a little everyday

 

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Creeping past that Winter Solstice marker in the year,

all round the grey cold rain pours down on a dull green landscape. The endless barrage of debilitating depressing news assaulting  our senses.  Covid crisis waxing and waning across the landscape of the year 2021 all of these  combined together  encourages me to look and see what might be useful in my  tool box for surviving and thriving, whilst  figuring  out a way to get through this .  

First off I dare not suppose for one moment  that when things are  bad that they  could not  get an awful lot worse.It feels like we are  firefighting on all fronts from health to environment to economy, human life as we know it is being bombarded on all sides.

How to counteract this.

So yes I have my yoga, meditation and breathing  practices, plus long walks daily  with my dogs often accompanied by friends or family . I eat mostly a plant based diet but will eat meat when I feel I need it . I am careful about the alcohol intake. I am also  careful about what I listen to and who I choose to be with, and what I absorb via social and other media.I read daily for enjoyment and   I try to go to sleep and rise at the same time most days. I make a point of meeting  and talking  to my friends mostly outside.  So what else could I do to really thrive during this time ?   

They say that to live well you have to die a little everyday 

 As humans we have grown used to living comfortable lives with all that we want and need at the tips of our digital fingers . Light, heat warmth, instantly available at the flick of a switch. This continuous  wealth of comfort leaves us less resilient, less alive, less able to cope when things do not go our way. 

This softness that has crept in creates an expectation 

that it is our right to live comfortable lives, when the  reality of nature tells us a very different human story . For eons we were hunter gatherers, by eons I mean hundreds of thousands of years, long, long before the last two  thousand years  of relatively  settled comfort . The actuality of human  living had to have been both  brutal and short .

Though life for our hunter gatherer ancestors was short the necessity of surviving each day’s new hardships and challenges must have been a complete adrenalin buzz. Imagine no meat today right we need to go and hunt some , doesn’t matter if it’s snowing or if we have no shoes – we need meat . Or the night is cold we must collect wood for the fire, so off we go, every day all weathers in awful discomfort making us profoundly grateful for the joy of an open hot fire in the evening – remembering all the times we were cold and could not have one.  
 

We lack this today , we lack the inoculation of discomfort

with it’s accompanying shot of adrenalin that forces us to  discern  between the  comfortable and boring existence of our current lives  compared with that of the  vibrant, dynamic, energetic and functioning aliveness required by our ancestors to survive and thrive  . Deep within our psych the rebooting  experiences of surviving a difficult event is the very essence of a throbbing pulsating life.

To come back to our present human predicament, how to bring emergency first aid to our lives and then thrive through this pandemic . 

 

Remember we need to die a little everyday to really live .

Here is a suggestion deliberately invite in uncomfortable physical experiences into your life on a daily basis.When we are in survival mode there is no room for any other thoughts .

  • Take a 30 second cold shower everyday
  • If you are couch potato get up and go for a walk everyday
  • Fast for 24 hours once a week
  • Take a three minute dip in river lake or sea every day
  • Go on a firewalk
  • Walk around your garden barefoot
  • Stand in the rain and allow yourself to get wet and cold

I wish you well for 2022 .