Pick yourself up, dust yourself down...

and start all over again. 

For me it’s essentially a matter of getting out of bed and dashing off to gym. Get the serotonin pumping before the existential angst has a chance to fully kick in. If I do this, my day will usually be okay.  

At this time of year it’s dark and cold, at 6 a.m. and bed is cosy. Early morning discipline has been flagging - one reason for yesterday’s miserable glumph.

Once I’m out of bed - yes, I did it this morning - it’s all pretty easy. Into the gym gear, quick drink of hot lemon and out the door before the kookaburras start up. It was 13 degrees, according to the car thermometer when I left. The winding road to town was empty. The village still asleep. It is my favourite time of day.

As well as warming up the body, I give my mind some early-morning stimulation via the iPod. I have podcasts of  dharma teachings, Radio National, BBC, all kinds of  stuff, as well as music.

Today I listened to a TED-talk: Someone called Dan Buettner was talking about longevity. They’ve found, apparently, a group of very-long-lived people in Sardinia, and another in Okinawa, Japan. And of course they had to come up with some Americans too. What did they all have in common?

Interestingly, the longest-living Americans turned out to be Seventh Day Adventists. The Seventh Day Adventists ( unlike the other groups) include many and varied gene-pools,  but all have similar rituals and rhythms to their lives. 

One of which is the Day Of Rest which (like Jewish Shabbat) is observed for twenty-four hours from sunset on Friday. No going shopping, no overtime, no hurtling down the highway to get your kids to a soccer match. Nothing more active than a ramble in Nature. God, how civilized!

All three communities had a spiritual basis of some sort, and a strong sense of mutual support. People are surrounded - often spend their whole lives with - like minded others. 

Which made me think about what I wrote yesterday- how all those daily emotional stresses and strains out in the rough-and-tumble  human world actually cause wear and tear on our nervous systems, our adrenals etc. I can often feel it physically, in my heart or my belly, that acidic feeling of anxiety or frustration, even if it’s just momentary. 

It seems people living in close-knit, supportive communities suffer from a lot fewer inflammatory diseases.

In fact according to Dan Buettner spending quiet/meditative  time - whether it’s ancestor worship or a walk in nature has scientifically proven health benefits. So darned obvious really  - but why do most of us so readily relinquish our precious quiet time?  As if ‘busy’ was good. 

Most of these folk who live long healthy lives eat lightly, and mostly from plant-sources. Most of them don’t do any structured ‘exercise’ ( I’m heaving weights up and down when I hear this) - but exert themselves every day in the normal course of their lives. I bet they don’t spend a lot of time staring at computer screens either. Oh and they mostly have gardens....I think I ‘ll get out right now and attack those weeds in the veggie patch.