What is the purpose of a long life, if you spend most of it in illnesses?
A short life is better than a long life of being bedridden, medicine sustained, and pierced by dozens of intravenous tubes.
In all the perplexities that are going on around, many people have forgotten how simple “simple” really is. They have forgotten that one key to a healthy life is being downright simple. Simplicity is often times so profound to other people that they do not believe it unless someone complicates it for them.
They find it hard to imagine that once upon a time, people lived comfortably and very happy — that satisfaction exists even without TV, air conditioners, or phones. They lived much longer and healthier lives long before the discovery of Science and Medicine. They don’t need some social science expert to tell them that needs are proportional to progress, and that needs cannot stay as they are while progress goes on, especially at a fast pace.
Well, some people have found the secrets to keeping simple while progress goes on running a crazy race around them. We will see this later in this book.
This thing about life being complicated (and should be made complicated to enjoy it) has been impressed on people by media and by a “metropolitan culture” that says life is all about competing and coping up.
Daily, from every possible angle of attack, we are bombarded by manufactured suggestions that we cannot be simply simple — that you got to have this and that, and you got to be this and that — or be left behind by the majority and be worlds apart from the rest.
This is mostly the spirit of modern commercialism. Though not actually said, the mindset of “being simple is a sin” has become rampant.
In case you haven’t noticed, commercialism has become the strongest life pressure, and the strongest life killer! The pressures brought about by stressful competition can kill!
Recently, Australian health experts discovered that too much emotional and work related pressures produce chemical reactions in the blood that later develop into fatal diseases like cancer.
According to physical therapists and massage therapy experts, pressures build up lumps in the body that constrict smooth blood flow. These constrictions produce your unexplained body aches that can later weaken your body defenses. They are harmful to your health.
Advocates of simple living say that Commercialism is blowing surface-deep physical and vain emotional needs out of proportion by tricking the conscience of people into believing that non-conformities to suggested and highlighted commercial needs are bad.
Simply put, it is saying, “You’re a loser if you don’t have this!”
Commercial needs are often for physical beauty, trendy accessories, fame, prestige, fashion, and other mundane, temporal, and non-essential things, all of which man can live without. These things excite and resurrect the spoiled brat in people.
