Parents Are the Problem

Yes, parents are key to your success in life.  Even your health, your mental well being, and whether you are going to have the right or wrong kind of friends.  And, yes, of course, there are exceptions to this by individuals who grow up and become healthy, happy contributors to society IN SPITE of their parents.  But they surely are few and far between the great majority who ARE the products of their parents, for better or worse.

We all know that we learn the most, particularly about the basics of human life and relations, in our youngest years.  We learn how to walk, to talk, to think while we are growing up, what is truth, respect, how to associate, to learn, and to love.  Or we don’t, because there are no parents, or the parents are absent, or just not parenting.  That’s, of course, a problem, which is a widespread condition in USA today.

That’s why the USA has the highest amount of juvenile offenders behind bars, many teenagers failing their high school curriculum, becoming almost unemployable ignoramuses, open to addiction to destructive ideas as well as to drugs and other forms of harmful pursuits.

I am of the opinion that the parents of those juvenile failures are as much responsible for their underachievement and the misdeeds they are performing as the affected adolescents themselves.  Actually more so, because the parents are grownups, they know the real world, they know what is right and wrong, and what needs to be done to be healthy and happy in this world, and how to succeed.  The kids don’t.  They need to learn this by the example the parents are living.

Well, therefore, according to how I see it, society as a whole, and our government in particular, has the duty and should educate its population for becoming good parents.  In my humble opinion, that should be a top educational program, an ongoing teaching course, along with learning to read and write.  At the same time it should be made available to all parents who happen not to have a clue as to what they were in for when taking on the job of being a parent.

All of which, of course, can be done ONLINE.  Thus no excuse for not being able to study and learn good parenting, for one can study on one’s phone, tablet, what-have-you.

If you want to try it out and get started, search the web for “Good Parenting” on your computer, phone, tablet, and take it from there.

Killing Time, Intelligently …

Yes, there are people who have time to kill, at least from their perspective.  For example, a while ago I was stuck in a high rise elevator, and it took them over two hours to get me out.  So what do you do with all that time to yourself by yourself and nowhere to go?  No WiFi, no phone connection either.  Well, no problem for me.  I did my Tai Chi exercises, nice and slow, and again, until the rescue crew was able to pull the elevator up to a floor and pry open the door.  I did have my iPhone with me at the time, but there was no reception in the elevator.  Otherwise I might have been online instead.

Yet there are many occasions for many people to be stuck in what could be dead time, which could be filled usefully somehow.  For example, I know retired people who, after a full professional life, are now in a totally relaxed position, free from any work demands, free from having to interact with busybodies and other keyed up individuals pursuing some urgent idea.  Actually, as some have told me, they wake up, and after breakfast they dread the empty time laying ahead for a day in which nothing is going to happen except that the usual timekillers like watching TV or watching the birds can be followed.

These empty times waiting to be filled are not only available to oldsters.  They come in different forms also for the young, maybe even more so, because they haven’t been exposed to all the multitude of world-intruding opportunities.  For example, the weather is bad and it’s not advisable to go outside and play.  All the other players won’t be there either, for the same reason.  So, what do you do?

Well here is the answer, or at least one answer, if the reception on your cellphone works, or a computer is handy, hooked up to the internet:  Go ONLINE and learn something!

Yes, that’s my recommendation.  Learning is and should be a lifelong process.  There is sooooo much to learn, much of it useful, and some of it just for the pleasure of it. So why not go for it?  If you absolutely have to, or want to, kill some time, go ONLINE, and study something,

If nothing comes to mind that you’d love to study (which is hard for me to comprehend), start with the history of your name, where it comes from, what it means, who else has it.  Then go from there finding out who those people were, where they lived, and how, what their lives looked like.  Who were their friends?  Their enemies?  What was or is their society like?  What would they look for in you, what you’d be doing and hopefully accomplishing.  Come to think of it, look at your society around you, of which you are a part.  Find out how your society sees you, what it likes to see in you and expects you to do.

That should give you a good start for subjects to examine more closely and learn about.  ONLINE all the way!  No more time waiting to be killed.  Studying and learning means and keeps you alive.  Being bored and mentally inactive means and does diminish your health.  Yet you are here to live, be healthy and happy.  That’s what it’s all about.  Why not go ahead and have fun!

Your World Expands ONLINE

In the year 600 A.D., the world average life expectancy was between 20 to 35 years, depending on where you lived. From the 1500s onward, till around the year 1800, life expectancy throughout Europe hovered between 30 and 40 years of age. Only 100 years ago, in 1919, life expectancy in the USA was 54 years. Currently it is 78 years in the USA, 80 years in the United Kingdom, 82 years in Canada. For the U.S., this is an increase of 44% in 100 years. There is no guarantee that an increase in that percentage range will continue over time. However, the current outlook is that life expectancy will continue to increase at least into the foreseeable future.

Although people live longer in 2019 and will be living longer yet in the near future, dementia and other mental diseases are making great inroads in that aging population. Alzheimer’s is one of the fastest growing epidemics in the United States, and elsewhere, affecting a growing part of that getting-older population, heavily impacting many long lives. The Alzheimer’s Association reports that the estimated progression rate of Alzheimer’s in the U.S. from 2000-2050 will increase by 193%, Plain dementia likewise.

What’s going on here? Why can’t the mind stay healthy as well as the body is able to last longer? Even thrive?

Well, it can, for Alzheimer’s as well as almost any form of dementia are not caused from the physical invasion of the brain by malevolent bacteria or the like, but are mere mental processes, or the lack thereof, which result in the brain getting calcified, Alzheimerized, or just losing its mental muscles altogether.

It’s these processes, which, however, are at the root of the problem, while really totally under one’s own control, even though one may never have exercised them or even known that we have them. If so, that then is part of the problem, for sure the beginning of the disease.

Therefore, if you want to be healthy, and have a healthy mind, it is essential to recognize that our brain is not a machine or computer which we inherited when we were born, and which will work as well as it can as long as it can. No. Our brain is alive. an organism, about 100 billion neurons that gather and transmit signals through around a trillion connections, “talking,” talking all the time, or not, if getting sick or getting otherwise impaired.

Normally, our brains are fully alive and plastic throughout. If you have any doubts about that, I recommend that you read the book “Soft-Wired” by Dr. Michael Merzenich - a world authority on brain plasticity - explaining how the brain rewires itself across the lifespan, and how you can take control of that process to improve your life. Amazon has it for you (free for Prime members): https://www.amazon.com/Soft-Wired-Science-Brain-Plasticity-Change-ebook/dp/B00EB48ZDU/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?keywords=“Soft-Wired”+by+Dr.+Michael+Merzenich&qid=1566802653&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmr0

Yes, that’s what you can do. Take control of that process and let your brain flourish. Also, that’s where ONLINE comes into the picture:

Regardless of your age, or particularly if you are advancing in age, don’t be scared by the technology of it. Using a computer, tablet, iPhone or Android is good for you, since with it you’ll be able to exercise your brain, work the processes that make it hum and blossom.

Most easily, ONLINE you can practice the mind exercises your brain needs to stay active and alive, such as produced by BrainHQ (https://www.brainhq.com), which will give you “proven brain exercises to build your cognitive resilience.”

Try it out and enjoy: