We all know the feeling of coming home after a hard day at work and crashing on the couch or that easy chair. In an attempt to clear your head from work tasks you start to think about what is for dinner tonight. Your imagination tracks over all your favorites and you feel a little reprieve, perhaps you can make it to the dinner table after a little rest. Shortly you explore what is possible for entertainment after dinner. All good as long as you don’t have to move much. Welcome to the American dream for many people today and sadly a lot of children. I don’t envision an easy fix.
Being born has to be the toughest experience you endured. Nice at least at the start your heart was beating and mom shared her microbiome with you so you could digest substance and survive. It took you most of that first year to master homeostasis. Early on you had the unique ability to understand to some basic-level communications from people that were speaking different languages and came from different cultures. That only sustained if required to develop forward. As you developed your five senses and a manageable relationship with them the world became an amazing experience. At this point, your parents, your family and/or your culture set the stage for your development. A juggle with tribal or country culture, religion or belief system and family values.
Can you recall your experience when you were a child? Being small and uninformed was a big handicap and often very frustrating. You marked and announced every indication of growth or learning. And with the exception of a wide range of food and/or unpredictable weather events like we are experiencing presently, you were healthy and active. You had a passion in youth for new experiences, growth and learning that is now dwindling in our children today. At some point in life our growth became outward and learning became just more redundancy. Human interaction was essential in childhood development but lost in adulthood to automation and limitations in range. Physical activity, in person communications and exploring new and exciting information are just as essential in adult health as in child development.
Our present state of humanity is referred to in psychology as dislocation; a disturbance from a proper, original, or usual place or state. Not a new state for humans but also not common most of the time. It is a product of war, threats of war, pandemics and general national state of poor health. We created this initially from a normal human reaction to fear and compounded it into “no truth”, “no trust”, which reduced value for personal accomplishments along with poor communications. Today this has compiled into a scenario described in the research published by Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931) where all participants in a “psychological crowd” lose sight of their ability to think and act independently. They don’t need to all be at the same location, just connected as today with the internet. Simple fix is to reestablish in-person human communication again. Join a club for fun. Have some neighbor parties this summer and meet new people. Goal is friendly human chatting with no politics, world or local. Find and feel the human element (attendance, charisma, poise) in another guest. Don’t judge or join but honor their presence; this is who they are and that is grand.
Chriss
