The Struggle To Be Remembered By History

You can't leave footprints in the sands of time if you’re sitting on your butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?
- Bob Moawad, Chairman and CEO of Edge Learning Institute

Addressing the charming imagery, it seems that many people would be satisfied to leave their buttprints in the sands of time. Only to have them disappear with the first breeze or wave.

At some point in their lives, almost everyone in every society becomes a follower, one who accepts what the leaders dish out because they believe they have no power or influence to change "what is and must be." For some this happens in the early years of childhood when parents teach them to be quiet and obedient, to follow the rules and to avoid being rude to others. Leaving footprints means insulting someone, usually someone who gets lots of attention. The insult may not be intended or justified, but it happens.

Others learn to stay in line and obey in school, where differences from the norm are discouraged in many cases, unless they are of the intellectual variety. Most of the rest learn to be followers when they reach the workforce, where individuality, independent thinking and acting without approval are strongly discouraged in most places of employment.

A few struggle to have their own small business, to be their own boss. At least 85 percent of these fail within the first five years because the business owners have not learned to think independently, do not have the spirit of an entrepreneur (who was inevitably a rebel in school and a troublemaker before reaching school age).

That leaves a very small percentage of people who have the internal strength to leave their footprints in the sands of time. Most of those suffer social and psychological abuse at the hands of the socially and politically powerful of their time, people who manage to wield their power because they have the ability to keep the noses of most they encounter to the grindstone. To keep them following.

Those few unique individuals who survive the social pressure deserve our recognition because they survived when most others caved. Merely surviving without finding themselves in prison or a psych unit warrants our acknowledgement, at least. Almost all of the anti-establishment leaders of the 1960s, for example, became powerful leaders within the business or academic establishment ten to 20 years later. For which should we remember them?

Within that group of survivors a few find a way to specialize by becoming expert at a skill, such as painting, acting or an athletic endeavour. They work every available hour to rise above the masses of their respective fields, often at the sacrifice of family or social life. When they reach the level where they really can leave their footprints in the sands of time, they have followers and admirers. They still always have enemies and naysayers, but everyone who succeeds at anything and gets public recognition gains a following if they want it.

In a world of nearly seven billion people, how many of us have the ability to leave our footprints in the sands of time?

There is always room for those with the desire and determination. The more of us that make it, the more of us can offer mutual support.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to show the tiny path out of the forest of conformity.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Why You Won't Likely Become Senile

"It is a mistake to regard age as a downhill grade toward dissolution. The reverse is true. As one grows older, one climbs with surprising strides."
- George Sand

We come to believe that most people who live long enough will become forgetful, absent minded, even confused about many things. We call it senility.

Isn't senility an inevitable disease for most people? No. It's the most preventable disease we know about. Senility is the direct result of mental inactivity for too long.

Most of us know that our muscles atrophy if they are not used. A person with a broken leg, for example, might find the muscle mass in the healed leg much reduced when the cast (or other device) comes off from what it was before the break. Senility is nothing more than atrophy of the brain.

The brain atrophys when it isn't used enough for problem solving and heavy thinking. Our brains, like the rest of our bodies, are built for heavy work. If they don't get enough work regularly, they lose the potential and strength they once had.

"Use it or lose it" applies as much to the brain as it does to the rest of our bodies.

Heavy brainwork even uses up a fair amount of energy, about 31 percent as much as heavy lifting. But we can think for longer than we can lift heavy weights, so thinking is good exercise.
Watching television is not brain exercise. The brain gets less exercise when we watch TV than it does when we dream.

A working brain solves problems, creates new work or considers the various factors that influence a given situation. Television does that work for us, which is why some programs for adults aim at a mental age of early adolescence. Our brain gets almost no work when we watch television.

Senility can be turned around if caught in time and if the person wants to change. However, it requires considerable dedication and determination for a person who is not used to using his brain to work it heavily for an extended period of time every day. Reading a newspaper is good if the person thinks about each item he reads. Reading books is another excellent form of exercise for the brain.

Nature provides that we can become something more than we ever were before as we age. When our bodies stop performing the way they used to when we were younger, our brain should be able to take over and turn us into a new and magnificent person.

Those who have accomplished this change know how dramatic it is and how much better they feel about themselves while their bodies get achy and creeky.

The biggest hurdle is to persuade a lazy brain to exercise when it has been so comfortably ensconced in lassitude for so long.

But it's worth the mental exercise to avoid becoming a breathing vegetable in a nursing home for the last years of our lives.

Bill Allin
Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make our senior years interesting and fulfilling.
Learn more at http://billallin.com