Thinking Citizen Blog — Purpose (Orion I), Alignment (Orion II), Community Creation (Orion III), Gadgets (Orion IV)
Thinking Citizen Blog: Thursday is Health, Health Care, and Global Health Policy Day
Today’s Topic: Purpose (Orion I), Alignment (Orion II), Community Creation (Orion III), Gadgets (Orion IV)
My recipe for health involves embracing a clear purpose and aligning what you do, say, eat, think, with that purpose. So what is your purpose? Presumably, that’s to be the best person you can be. But what on earth is that?
Let’s find out together. Three steps.
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
STEP ONE — THE PURPOSE THING — ORION I — Orion I is the ideal you
1. What are the seven qualities of the ideal you?
2. How do you want to be remembered by those you love most dearly when you are gone?
3. How do you want to be thought of now, while you are still breathing?
NB: My recommended Orion I for those too busy to do their homework would be gratitude (1), courage (2), common sense (3), hard work (4), excellence (5), curiosity (6), and joy (7).
If you can’t come up with your own Orion I, please share mine with all those you love, request feedback, and pass it on.
STEP TWO — THE ALIGNMENT THING — call it Orion II — the daily routines that incarnate your daily quest to be the ideal you
1. How does how you breathe strengthen your body, mind, heart and soul?
2. Do you write every day mindful that reading without writing is like eating without digesting?
3. Do you have a regular weekly thematic calendar mindful of the facts that a.) thematic continuity is key to depth of thought and joy, b.) you learn and you teach by example, c.) writing without an analytical framework is like digesting without enzymes; and d.) writiong without sharing (eg. publishing) is like sex without a partner (nothing wrong with that but potential for productivity limited).
NB: Does your weekly thematic calendar cover all the basic joys of life such that at the end of the week you have increased your superpower to bring joy to anyone you meet, anytime, anywhere, whether aged 5 or 95?
NB: My off-the-shelf solution to this challenge of structuring a thematic calendar is: music (Thursday), art (Friday), sports (Saturday), miscellaneous, that is humor, food, and travel (Sunday), math (Monday), literature (Tuesday), science (Wednesday).
If you are too busy to make your own schedule, feel free to pinch mine. The more, the merrier.
STEP THREE — COMMUNITY CREATION — ORION III — do you reach out daily to expand the community of joy? How many people said to you today “You made my day”?
1. What is a reasonable daily quota? How about seven?
2. Should you strive for a balanced group from each of the following categories: family, neighbors, work colleagues, people with whom you interact at stores, banks, and so on total strangers.
3. Each reaching out is an opportunity to exercise that superpower of joy that you have nurtured every day for the past week.
NB: My personal goal is 10–20 strangers per day. I rack up the numbers with singing to foreign tourists their favorite song in their native language. It took me 15 years to get this superpower. You could get it in 15 months. Perhaps 15 weeks. It takes a geezer like me (age 72), about three hours per song. It would take a kid half of that.
For details see the first attachment below — a presentation I made to the Adams House Senior Common Room on what were then 39 songs. I am now up to 46.
FOOTNOTE — a fourth Orion, the little gadgets that have been of outsized benefit in pain reduction.
1. A left leg shoe lift that corrected a spinal misalignment due to a difference in leg length detected by my voice teacher when I was 24.
2. A lumbar roll for back pain finally recommended by a physical therapist when I was 55 years old after years of failed consultations with orthopedic surgeons at leading Boston hospitals.
3. Excedrin Tension Headache — off the shelf relief for migraines after decades of prescription medications. No longer needed as my congestive heart failure medication has had the unexpected side effect of eliminating my migraines (knock on wood).
NB: A little plastic nose clip in the event of a bloody nose (very risky when you are on blood thinners), daily nasal gel application (for bloody nose prevention), Pepcid and Tums for stomach pain after overindulgence on the food front.
CONCLUSION — Make an Orion. Share it. Make my day.
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED THEMATICALLY
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
YOUR TURN
Please share the most interesting thing you learned in the last week related to health, health care or health care policy — the ethics, economics, politics, history….
Or the coolest, most important thing you learned in your life related to health are or health care policy that the rest of us may have missed.
Or just some random health-related fact that blew you away.
This is your chance to make someone’s day. Or to cement in your mind something really important you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than you otherwise would about something that matters.
