living well: thriving and flourishing

You're flourishing? How so?

You’re not? Why?

Healthy living is necessary for living well. But what motivates that? It’s evidently not an intrinsic value, because so many persons live as if they expect every expense of medicine to save them when they near death, as if “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to loose.” How did you avoid that attitude?

We want meaningful happiness for the long run, so what are the aspects of that which keep your aging healthy and inspiring? What’s your advice for those who would live fast and die young, as if immortal? ("I can quit later" because there's a fantasy that scars can be undone or investments will quickly appreciate by wishing so?) Big medicine becomes humanity’s catcher in the rye, and everyone pays.

How are you ensuring happy later years? Or, if you’re already an elder, what’s your advice to others (especially for much younger persons)?

How do you see integration of mind, body, and spirit in the face of challenges, stress, setbacks, loss, etc.?

What’s a new resource relating to all this, that should be listed for others later?

Building an archive of ways to cope well, ways to think practically, yet creatively, about good later years, or ways to re-find an anchor in storms that secures hope and promise can be like a resort for others in so much wild climate.

What’s your way with respect to what issues that threaten to unbalance your game?

I think that this kind of interest is what "The Evolution of Humanity" is all about. No?

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I think overall these questions could be pared down and focused. In fact, that is my advice. Focus on one thing at a time.

 

Good advice. Thanks.

 

I'll answer the first question since the OP is such a shotgun blast:

I'm doing well because I'm willing to be isolated and uncomfortable.

Really, that's all you have to tell people to get a job that pays well.

 

I am doing well in my career because I have spent many years becoming an expert at what I do. On top of that, I have taken career and life risks that have paid off (e.g. I have, in the past, taken a new job that came with a reduction in pay to gain the experience I needed to get where I wanted to be). I have also pushed through the difficult parts of work to both outlast and wait for the *right* opportunities rather than just *an* opportunity.

In part, I've been lucky, but in other ways, I have been persistent and tried to maintain a solid reputation.

 

• bouquet?
• array that people over time decide is worth focusing? Or not.
• basis for picking flowers for break-off specific topics later?
• starting point for turning focused psychological importances into social and philosophical importances?
• way to find my kindreds here and become a lasting member?

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I don't see, or don't care to see my life in these terms. The whole idea of spirit, or even the idea of a separation of mind and body are anathema to me.

I face set backs by rolling into the fetal position for a while and then shaking off and getting back to work. That's not meant to be a literal fetal position, what I mean is that I reassess (through the tears of madness and frustration), regroup (inter the dead) and get on with living.


And yes... more focus in the OP of any thread is welcome.

 

Uh, yes? You can post whatever you want. For the best success focus your threads.

Post your idea/story/problem, post some articles that discuss it, post your feelings.

Without focus, the Threadjack Gremlins make an appearance. I, uh, am one of them.

 

Oooo! It's Hallow'een again! Thanks! The image is really cute (no sarcasm intended).

As a person who's been participating in online discussions since Stewart Brand's The Well and Howard Rheingold's Electric Minds (mid-90s) and have been a discussion forum admin for over a decade at Yahoo Groups, I can appreciate your good advice.

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Protip: Have someone else provide the conditions.

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I am a big fan of the Gremlins franchise. They're the right amount weird and evil and the puppets are super gnarly lookin'. I would totally party with those guys.

Not sure what this means. I've been on the Internet since Usenet, have posted tens of thousands of comments on a dozen sites... and I'm still a huge dumbass.

My comment was merely a suggestion as how to best focus a single thread so as to get the most out of your TFP experience.

 

I'm huger, I bet. (See my signature!)
--- merged: Aug 8, 2013 at 3:05 PM ---

Could be. But I think of the humanities and arts, when I think of resourcefulness for understanding meaningfulness in life. Your book note here (I, too, like the Rational Optimist—and the idea of this highly) makes this topic good for social philosophy. But I had to choose a forum.

Indeed. For the oversensitive, politically sophisticated, thus depressive (if not chronically angry) activist living a Great Recessional plight, it's good to think about the bases of hope and promise. It's good to point to this and emphasize it. Charles Kenny recently published Getting Better: Why global development is succeeding—and how we can improve the world even more (Basic, 2011). The NYTimes runs a wonderful blog, "Fixes," which "explores solutions to major social problems."

Great! Part of TFP member ReginaV's recent debilitating depression ("Bipolar" topic) might relate to losing sight of how her dreams and goals figure into what her life, thus her weeks, thus her hours, are building toward. This kind of thing is Big Medicine.

I totally agree. A kind of issue that has become increasingly important for me is conveying the integrity of solitude, living alone (I'm widowed), making oneself the basis for the strength in one's life (which is the only way that one can be authentically available for others to lean on), and insisting on one's own time. For example, the artist in us is entitled to insist on time for the art even when nothing comes of it. A man who recently won a Pulitzer for his concerto said that he spent most of his composition time staring into space (needing to not be called to account for that).

Thank you!

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Nope, pretty sure ignorance is still bliss.

/brainless and happy as fuck

 

Why on earth is this thread in the Music, Literature, and Sitting-Around-In-A-Coffee-Shop-Stroking-Our-Own-Egos forum?

Oh. Wait.

 

WEB FORUMS:
"If it's all so blatantly obvious then why waste the keystrokes?"​

Play the game. Rumor has it you're a champ.

 

Rogue47, I’d agree that the more evidence-based one’s activity is, the better. I value knowledge intensiveness highly. The good life is well informed.

Baraka_Guru, you cause me to think of differences between “ego” and self. For example, wanting good interaction isn’t the same as egoistic self-display—though egoism is rampant in life, thus the Internet, too. Wit (in literary writing) isn’t the same as impulsive disdain (in stand-up comedy).

Charlatan, your note is inspiring. Devotion to gaining expertise through a good degree of risk tolerance and prudent investment deserves high admiration.

So, you go into the wind already integrated. Great. Many people don’t. And a sense of one’s body apart from oneself is very common, in the vanity fair, in ill health, and among persons with physical disabilities. Also, people outgrow religion in terms of spirituality because there's often need for a notion of de-materialized (if not disembodied) meaningfulness beyond oneself and sociocentric life.

Great resilience.

Thanks, everyone.