Three Easy Steps To A Longer, Healthier And Happier Life
	Step One: Keep Your Life Simple <  Previous Contents Next  >

It may be too unsophisticated, but keeping your life simple is an important key to longevity. Aside from prolonging life, it makes a long life happy. 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.

Without knowing it, many drag themselves into the lethal race of commercialism. Here are some ways that commercialism traps people:

Urbanized places are buzzing with commercialization. The objective of people worldwide is to urbanize as many places as possible to make them havens for investors. This is more evident in Southeast Asia, South America, and South Africa. As many business establishments open up, more jobs become available. As businesses mushroom everywhere, stiff competition follows. Most businesses cannot live without killing each other.

Somewhere in this rat race, you find yourself in the middle of mountains of work pressures. As business owners crave for more profits, you are yanked along the tug-of-war whether you like it or not. You are cast off into the ocean of deadlines, quotas, and cut-off dates. You kiss your own dream life goodbye, because you are now fulfilling somebody else’s dreams — your boss.’

As commerce develops, new products and services are introduced. People purchase expensive things because these products make them the centers of attraction. These things get better every day because of competition.

New products and services are sold to produce profits, so new markets ought to be found — and you and your family are among these potential markets. Businesses spend lots of money to convince buyers to buy their products by “helping” these customers see their need for such items. The desire to buy the products will intensify once you see TV personalities (especially actors and sports idols) using them; or when all your neighbors, friends, and relatives have them.

Because you don’t want to be left behind and be called a loser, you are influenced to buy them. Of course, buying these latest product lines (and in commercialism, there’s always a new one that will outshine what you already have) entails an added burden to your already tight budget, so you will have to strengthen your buying power. That means you have to get a salary raise, an additional part-time job, or a part-time business.

Worse, your last option is to use your credit card — using “money” that does not yet exist. The temptation to buy and forget about your budget triples when all you have to do is have your card “slashed” at the cashier counter, and presto! You have everything your eyes desire! Then the sufferings come sooner than you expect when the credit card company starts sending you bills.

Here is another rub: Often, the more you have these latest models, the more you incur electric consumption, and the more you buy spare parts. Just look at how TV sets now seem to be useless without pairing them with the latest DVD players or computer game devices. Then look in your kitchen. The simple thing of mixing your eggs, milk, and flour now needs electric consumption. Have you noticed how your cell phone model keeps getting out of style?

More people are being obsessed with consumerism (or being addicted to their role of being consumers) and plunge their heads deeper into work to increase their buying power.

The Journal of the American Medical Association once said in the early 1990s that workers who had demanding jobs and had little control over them were three times more likely to develop high blood pressure; while those with demanding jobs but had control over them had no such problem. How many today have “control” over their work? Even big business owners do not have control over their businesses when economic problems hit the world, which often happens today.

The American Institute of Stress reported that more than 66 percent of all visits to primary-care doctors are for stress-related problems.

Commercialism gave birth to fast food chains serving oily and spicy foods that are bad for the health. All the keeping up with schedules, appointments, deadlines, and goals have left little time (if any) for preparing fresh and healthy foods that take time to prepare. People often eat processed foods that have no real nutrients except synthetic ones. They add many preservatives to keep the business from losing profits.

Have you noticed how fast food chains mushroom around thriving business establishments? The frantic search for more profits helplessly lures the employees to take the easy yet unhealthy way.

The faster food is prepared in fast food stores, the more it is oily and spiced by quick-fix chemicals. Nowadays, it is rare to find foods patiently marinated in natural herbs and spices, and cooked through steam or boiled in all-natural soups. These foodstuffs, taking no less than artistic skills and the patience of old days to cook, take time to prepare. The food race has no interest in anything that does not convert into FAST cash.

The above are just some useless commercial races people often find themselves in. There are many more. Yet, there is a way out of all these. Some people have chosen a better path than what this world presents as “life.” Each of these people has chosen a simple life that is long, healthy, and happy. You can also have this life if you choose to…and you can begin right now!