124. saving the wrong life

Let’s be honest, we’re not saving a life worth living by wearing masks and social distancing. At best we are trying to reduce the burden to a faulty lifestyle. Despite the numbers you hear on the news, very few people’s lives have been taken specifically by the corona virus. Instead, they have fallen to the detrimental effects of their poor lifestyle choices that led them to be susceptible to something slightly worse the the common cold. If we want to continue with the narrative of “saving lives” why don’t we define what life is? It surely isn’t dragging your stressed out and fatigued self through the day on stimulants and processed foods, seeking alleviation from the pain we feel in our body and soul with medications only to find refuge, not in the natural world, but in relaxation in front of the television. Is this the life we want to save? Surely, no one wants to live like this if given the choice, yet so many people do. And so many people choose to socially distance themselves away from the real problem, which is the way we are living. 

The natural way of life is advanced by taking the last iteration and improving upon it. Call it evolution or some divine plan but it’s easy to see we consistently change over a period of time. We can always argue whether it’s for the better or worse but there is momentum in one direction nonetheless. Unfortunately, with our fervent denial of the health implications of the way we choose to live our lives, we are simply trying to extend the last iteration in this progression as long as possible. It’s obvious that it is a failed belief as all of the ardent followers of the Standard American Diet have been exponentially more affected than those who have chosen a different path, and therefore a different life. 

The default in nature is health, so life should be defined as one of vibrancy, enjoyment, positivity, and growth. Anything that works against this is not serving you, which is probably why you’re frightened for your health during this pivotal time. The glaring systematic failure of our current approach toward capturing health is necessary to provide the opportunity to reflect, to learn, to grow, and to overcome. This whole “crisis” we face is based on living a lifestyle where inflammation, stress, depression, etc., has become normalized. Where “health” is relative. But that’s not how any of this works. It seems like we are missing the forest through the trees.

The very life we want to save is the fundamental reason we’ve become susceptible to this health crisis to begin with. It isn’t so much the matter that covid is bad, but that the lifestyle we’ve chosen is making our connection to this virus worse. At a very basic level a virus is information the body uses to become informed to shifts in the environment. There are millions of viruses floating around at any given time that find their way into us and “rewire” our genome to better match us to our environment. Through something called Horizontal Gene Transfer, the genetic information contained within any given virus provides the body with certain genomic information to make epigenetic changes to better prepare us for an ever changing world. If we’re not aligned with the natural world because of a continued insistence on medications, or antibiotics, or any vast array of technological advancements, we are not going to receive these viral “updates” very efficiently, and as a response, they can and will cause sickness.

We’re never going to be able to optimize our health by continuing to think within the same paradigm that led us to poor health to begin with. The “life” we are trying to save needs to die.