Since we started five months ago, we have talked mostly about being healthy by what we eat, don’t eat and how we move. That got me thinking, why do these things to be healthy? It takes more work. All I could come up with was to live longer, feel better and to remain physically active throughout our life. That thought opened a can of worms in my mind. And what should we do with that extra time and energy? I first started thinking I would be veering too far out of my lane to post about what we should be doing with our lives. What do I know about what we should be doing with our lives? That is kind of deep thinking for me. I started to put my thoughts down and perhaps it can start a discussion.
I came up with six things I think are beneficial to our lives.
1. Take care of our bodies. We have been talking about taking care of our bodies for five months and will talk about it more, so won’t spend time now.
2. Interact with each other socially. We talked about the need for social interaction in the post from Jan 18, 2024. It makes us feel better physically and emotionally and makes us healthier.
3. Be a lifelong learner. Learn about something that interests you. Learn a language, learn about history, learn about philosophy, learn about theology. The subjects are as endless as are the resources. Depending on the subject, you can be pretty learned on a subject in 3 months or at least have a good start. Try this. Do some research to pick out the top 5 books on a subject that interests you (maybe World War II). If you are an average reader and you read for 30 minutes per day, every day, never skip, you will finish a book in 12-15 days, reading all five books in under three months. Five well reviewed books on a subject will make you well versed on that subject.
4. Being Creative. I used to think that being creative meant writing music, painting or creating something original that had never been done before. I read a book by Kate Volman titled ‘Do What You Love.’ When Kate talked about being creative, she talked about it in the literal sense. You create when you use a pattern to sew a hat, build a desk, follow instructions to do a craft, play a song, etc. Try picking up something you used to enjoy doing but haven’t done in a very long time. Try different new things you might enjoy. If you end up liking and continuing to do them for a little or long while, then great. If you don’t care for doing them as much as you thought you might, then leave that behind and try something new and different.
5. Growing Spiritually. Many of the subjects I write about should take more than a blog post and certainly more than one paragraph. This is one if there ever was. Find an author you like and do some learning. Spend some quiet time. This can take some practice in our loud world. I recommend ‘The Screwtape Letters’ by C.S Lewis.
6. Being Charitable. Doing something for someone else can take many forms. It can be an organized volunteer or keeping your heart open for opportunities.
Sometimes, we might have more concentration on some of these than others, but we shouldn’t go a long time ignoring any one of them.
Let me know in the comments of some others I didn’t think of.
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