“A man has two lives to live, and the second one begins when he realizes he only has one.”
– Confucious
One day many years ago I was having an especially bad day at my teaching job. I was in school late in the evening. I called my wife and said, “I’m sick of this crappy job, not by the job itself but by its corrosive working environment. Let’s quit this job and run away to the USA. I’m not entirely sure I knew how to go to the USA at the time.”
My wife said, “Sounds like a pretty good idea. I can help you to research how to go to the USA and if successful, I can also help you to buy the air tickets too.”
One year later from that phone call, the lovely Macomb city of Illinois welcomed me. I was learning I’d need to be careful what I suggested around this woman I married.
She is my hero not because she is a great wife, although she is.
She is my hero because she is a great human being.
She takes the time to care about people in her life.
She talks little but thinks distinctly beyond the periphery.
When I was a PhD student a while back, at midnight around my PhD qualifying exam, pregnant with our first baby, she sensed I was struggling to cope with the incoming baby, life and, of course, the hectic pressure of research proposals. She paused, and then, in that tunnel of life circle, told me to spend less time staring at what’s in front of me (the book), and more time visualizing the outcome.
Having a clear image of the outcome, as she suggested, in my mind pushed me going.
It gave me clear purpose, direction, and intent.
I remember many of those life lessons from her during the course of living.
Jack Canfield said beautifully, “ Everything you want is on the other side of fear.”
I sometimes think, “really.”
What is the other side of fear?
Most of us: fear of losing our job, fear of losing our investments, and most importantly, fear of losing our loved ones.
I understand, we can control some fears, we can minimize some, but some we can’t.
This is one of the basic rules of life.
As humans, we have one obligation to society.
To ensure we, and our parents, sons and daughters, are not a burden to others.
The rest is our personal choice.
Make your own and make the world a far more interesting place by picking one choice at a time, influence others by that choice and live the life happily ever.
How to make personal choices is another hurdle in our life.
We have to deep down to understand how choice appears in our mind?
I would like to share a parable about the monk and the minister.
Two very close friends grow up and choose their quite different paths in life.
One becomes a monk and the other a rich and powerful minister to the king.
After many years they meet in a place.
As they continue talking, the minister uses pity words on the monk.
He continues, “if you would have learned to serve the king, you wouldn’t have to live this poor monk life.”
Monk replies, “if you would have learned to live on monk life, you would not have to be a servant to the King.”
I guess, the essence is, the majority of our lives fall somewhere between monk and minister.
It’s up to us whether we want to go closer to the monk or minister side.
Personally, I want to go closer to the monk side.
Choosing to do something is the single most powerful tool we have for navigating this complex world we’ve created.
Understanding it mentally is critical.
If we choose something to master, the chosen task becomes a wonderful servant. If we don’t, it will surely make us servants.
“But dad,” my little daughter inquired.
“I know choice is important. I just don’t want to spend my life thinking about it.”
“Many people in this world have much more to do with their precious time and mind than thinking about a single choice. We have to build roads, discover medicines, break world records, create amazing technologies, teach new generations, and establish new businesses,” she added.
I told her, “take time, pick one at a time and start doing.”
Here is one more example, from my personal experience, of how choice appears to us.
Recently, I experienced some health issues in my body, and no doctors clearly diagnosed it so far and I chose to read about body, disease, and nutrition.
I was looking for some answers myself.
I realized.
We are at the point of transition.
I believe we are moving forward from a focus on survival of the fittest to sustainability for all.
World is challenging us to use our essential creativity and shared wisdom to address problems from new dimensions, new structures, and new concepts.
We definitely have to reinvent ourselves along the way.
These thoughts came to my mind once MDs were unable to diagnose my problem.
Initially, I never thought that our body and mind works this way, but my mind forced me to read things that are relevant to me in the current circumstance because, the bottom line, I have to live healthy and happy, if I can.
I learned some interesting facts about our body which are related to my current health issue.
I learned one defense system in our body: microbiome.
We have 40 trillion bacteria in our body to defend our health.
One special bacterium, Akkermansia mucinophila, is very important out of trillions of bacteria in our body.
It is key to control our body mass, metabolism, and immunity.
Lean people have more of these bacteria in their gut than obese people.
Pomegranate, cranberry, turmeric, green tea, and chili pepper help this bacteria to grow in the gut.
These foods make the intestine secrete more mucus making the gut environment better to thrive.
Foods like kimchi, sauerkraut, cheddar cheese, and sourdough bread are very good for our microbiome system.
In reality, our bacteria eat what we eat.
They metabolize the food and drink we consume.
After that they create either beneficial or harmful byproducts that influence our health.
I learned about another defense system in our body: immunity.
Foods like blackberries, walnuts, and pomegranate are very good for our immune system.
I learned about angiogenesis in our body, which I had no idea before how it works.
Angiogenesis is the process by which 60 thousand miles of blood vessels are formed.
If all our blood vessels were lined up end to end, they would encircle the earth twice. Remarkably, it takes only 60 seconds from the time your heart pumps out a drop of blood for it to circulate throughout the body and back again.
I learned that soy, green tea, coffee, tomatoes, red wine, and hard cheese influence our angiogenesis.
Green tea contains a bioactive compound called epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), which is a potent angiogenesis inhibitor.
It reduces abdominal fat and waist circumference.
Foods like turmeric, soybeans, ginseng, and broccoli all prevent unwanted blood vessels from supplying nourishment to cancer cells, and they suppress the growth of fat cells too.
I found an amazing fact that Asian people, especially Japanese, live so long, why?
Probably, because they consume lots of soy, vegetables, and tea in their diet.
“Really”, I thought.
These foods reduce the chance significantly to lower risk for developing breast and other cancers.
As we embrace our life choices, whatever is yours’, I invite you all to share our life experiences, knowledge, and wisdom.
Deep inside us, we are designed to share our wisdom with the global community to make it a better place.
It is this great energy with our choice in life the Universe that drives communities, cultures, companies, and countries to new heights.
The more we can put our good energy with our choice into this great unfolding, the better off we all will be.
We owe it to each other to make this a rewarding place to live called the world.
I love to read about body, health, disease, and nutrition, though I’m a chemist by training.
What’s yours’?
Together, we will continue to change the world, one person and one choice at a time.
It is time for us to slow down, breathe, and push on our choice.
What we do certainly makes a difference, and we have to decide what kind of difference we want to make.
Remember, you owe it to yourself to live a life you richly deserve with your own choice.
Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina
Progress for valued society