The Value of Value
The new driver in my family approaches me with tears in her eyes saying she “broke my car”. Her follow up statement is, how much is that? (referring to the damage). My mind streams to days 16 years ago when I would spend the whole day Sunday, waxing the outside so that soft cloth would just slip off the hood, or working in the engine bay replacing her turbo, or taking her racing with local race clubs, or popping the hood open with some younger car guys and having jaws drop like they just saw the arc of the covenant. So how much? …….it’s not in the price of repair, it is the deep cut placed into my years of caring for a one of a kind, limited edition racecar. Price was never the point, it is the responsibility being displayed.
How can an individual fathom how valuable something is when they have not experienced the steps required to attain, cultivate, grow and mature this “thing”? I love the scene in Jurassic Park when Jeff Goldblum’s character is scolding the scientists on recreating dinosaurs-
“…..don’t you see the danger John/genetic power is the most awesome force this planet has ever seen but you wield it like a kid whose found his dads gun/the problem with the power your dealing with here is it didn’t require any discipline to attain it….”
Fast forward to the Aquabounty Tech, splicing genes between Atlantic Salmon and a Pacific Chinook Salmon to create a fish that doesn’t stop eating during slow season and gets bigger and fatter in a shorter time. They point out it is good for humanity since we will have more fish to feed the planet. But what about the natural ebb of allowing plankton and smaller fish to repopulate and bloom for the next season of new salmon. Do we genetically modify the feeder fish of the monster salmon so the feeder fish population don’t become extinct? Or a more basic law of evolution creating an ideal body weight for a salmon-region of the ocean but the same law being broken by human technology. Is there a price to pay for creating fat fish?
Well let’s see what has happened to humans. The world obesity rate has placed the United States as 5th highest for obesity out of 192 countries in the world health organization’s statistics. https://apps.who.int/infobase/Comparisons.aspx The cool thing with being obese in the US is with our healthcare technology, we can take care of high cholesterol with statins, we can replace worn out knees and hips with steel, we can control diabetes with insulin pumps so you can eat anything you want, we can short cut eating disorders with gastric bypass, we can cheat heart attacks with angioplasty.
In other words, the new generation is being brought up to cater to a voracious appetite of cheap fast food, with the technology addiction that keeps them out of the gym and in front of a computer and the only learned remorse as being, “with this year’s physical exam, your new problem is _______ for which I have a pill that wont interact with last year’s medicines. Our challenge in the healing world is how to teach someone with massive risk factors, about the impending doom approaching. How to impart to someone the feeling of communing with nature, the benefit of giving and receiving, the joy in detaching from goals and the knowledge of how it feels to feel your purpose in life. What seems intangible and unimportant usually is where we end up when the shift in life comes. For most, the shift occurs on deaths door and we wait until then. Reality is with the way economy, technology, nutrition and physical disability are infecting like a viral infection, deaths door is opening sooner. The greatest teacher is personal experience but does that mean we just wait until the knee, pancreas, brain and heart give out? How do you teach someone to invest money they don't have, in a concept they have never experienced, to hold back and event they don't believe in? It is a sin to just give short cuts to remedy problems without teaching the value of evolutions rules of existence. Or showing how each individual contributes and is essential to the growth and existence of the universe. If we don’t teach living in a mindful way to coexist and contribute, there will be no remorse for actions and life will lead up to a point where the universe kicks you out of the timeline and you cease to exist (probably in a very painful and lonely ending). Guess the only solution is to educate and live by example hoping others that are "ready" for the shift remember seeing the bliss in your way of living. If they are ready, so am I; if they aren't ready, I will wait......sooner or later they will feel the urge to change-or be forced to change.
