Having grown up in New Hampshire, I had the benefit of that "Live Free Or Die" New England independent thinking to shape my childhood. I also had the good fortune to be exposed to great books by Ralph Waldo Emerson and his buddy Henry David Thoreau. These men weren't afraid to think differently and express their ideas to the public. Luckily they weren't inhibited by political correctness and the associated law suits that come with today's attempts to express something other than the media-confined, perfectly-phrased, sound-bite niceties that limit us to a very narrow modern existence. Can a person even get angry any longer? What about raising your voice? Nope, those two behaviors will bring you charges for sure.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, like Benjamin Franklin, knew even in their times, that being healthy was far preferable to being ill. Isn't it amazing that more illness exists today than did a hundred years ago? We live longer now, but do we live healthier? Obesity was a rarity in Emerson's day. People worked too hard to get fat. And there was not the leisure activities that fill our days, and our years with 3568 hours of media entertainment. Back then, a good book was as far as the entertainment went on a day to day level. Medical science intervenes to keep us alive today, but a century ago, people were generally healthier.
I enjoyed the family photo albums of my grandparents and relatives that I had from a century ago. You could see in the photos what filled their daily lives. They had picnics and read books and socialized with friends and family. Today we seek solitude. When was the last time you went on a picnic? What was the name of the last book you read? How often do you have parties at your house each year? In our modern lives, most people will answer, "never", "don't recall", and "we don't", to the previous questions.
So, our new definition of personal peace is that of solitude, and not finding peace within ourselves and amongst our community. A new state of loneliness has emerged where the television is more of a companion than your spouse. I have married friends who tell me the biggest problem in their marriage is that they feel lonely all the time. How can you be lonely when you're married? We have gained so much with our modern technologies, yet we have lost a little more of what makes life great.
Some things never change though. The first wealth is still health, and I imagine it always will be.
Dr. Doug Ikeler www.lifeextensionbooks.net
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