Epistle 31 – House Hunting

My “retirement plan” of mutual funds and Florida real estate seemed like a hell of an idea at the time. When it went South without me, we were stuck with two houses whose value was fading faster than my memory. Impaled on the horns of the two-house dilemma, the answer seemed obvious—buy a 3^rd house! After all, it’s a buyer’s market, right? Of course, nobody wants to finance the purchase at any price, but somebody has to support the US economy besides the government. I just wish I wasn’t alone.

Actually, we have a real good reason for buying another house. The second job I had to take in lieu of retirement is a 5-hour commute, one-way, and that’s a little much even for someone who spent most of his adult life on the Kennedy Expressway. So, with a little courage and a lot of lunacy, even for a Boomer, we plunged into the abyss, a strange world of foreclosures, lease purchases, short sales, long sales, and even a regular house sale now and then. I always feel sorry for the folks who are trying to sell the family homestead the old fashioned way.

They usually don’t realize that they can barely give it away, let alone get their money out of it. They just want to pack up and move back to Toledo to be close to their grandkids. It’s actually a defensive move so their kids don’t move back in with them, but nobody warned them that their dream home in the Sunbelt would be taken over by the bank, which would be taken over by the government, which would be taken over by politicians from Neptune.

Anyway, back to our grand housing empire. While we are breathlessly waiting for somebody to buy our old house, rent our old house, or just steal away with it in the night, we need a place to hang our hat, so we have spent 6 months visiting every hat hanger in 4 counties. They range from mansions at ridiculous prices to something practical at ridiculous prices. Naturally, we leaned toward the former, but woke up in the middle of the night panicking to think we would actually have to live in it. At our age one of us could be lost for days if it was too big.

Having come to our senses and having frustrated more than one poor realtor beyond human endurance, we are making an offer on a modest home with a gorgeous view. My wife is busily planning the décor while I study the neighborhood golf course. Of course, the bank could still screw it all up by telling me I can’t afford another house, which is probably true, but the banks got me into this mess in the first place, right? The house we’re trying to buy is owned by the bank so it could be a poetic standoff—we can’t buy it and they can’t sell it. Maybe there is justice in this world after all.

We Will Win

When a poet and king once sang, “Our bodies are beautifully and wonderfully made oh God”, he knew what he was saying. One of the wonderful things that our bodies could do is healing itself. We need intervention from time to time but the body, when treated right has the ability to correct itself. Often, all it takes is to listen to what the body is telling us.

Sure there is nothing much we can do when our body is already shouting for the nearest comfort room or the stomach is rumbling for the next meal. Often times though, when there is pain, like a headache, the normal course of action is to reach out for a bottle of painkiller to mask the pain so we can function.

Listening to what our body is telling us would prevent a lot of illnesses from getting worse. When there is a headache, there is something wrong done to cause the pain. Taking painkillers is a good but temporary solution, the next step though and more permanent is to know what caused the pain. Not being able to identify that will make us grab the painkiller in another six to eight hours. Every ingestion of a tablet or a capsule puts our liver and our colon in danger. Chemical residues that were components to its manufacture will stay in the liver and overtime will clog the colon that will produce other more serious illnesses. Learning to listen to the messages that our body tells us is that important.

There are many other things that our body is trying to tell us. Being sleepy, feeling sluggish, increasing weight or weight loss, body temperature, mood swings, blood pressure, and pulse rate are among the few that could be observed and could be measured with certainty. When that happens the body is telling us that something is not working well.

Taking energy drinks, resting, relaxing, taking antacids are few of the things that are normally done but all these have temporary effects. When the feeling of sluggishness for example persists, no amount of energy drink could restore the body to functioning normally. All the palliative measures taken are temporary solutions that do not cure the illnesses. It only masks the effects and masking the effects could be terribly dangerous.

What cures the illness is the identification of the cause of the pain or discomfort and if it is not a medical emergency, the avoidance of repeating the same thing to happen again. It is a conscious effort to sit back, think a while, and deciding on matters that will work best for the body and those that will not. Taking temporary measures and dependence on it will make matters worse.

When we learn to listen to what the body is telling us, our dependence on costly interventions and help from health care professionals will be minimal aside from lessening the introduction of chemicals to our system.

What we do not understand we tend to reject. Herbal medicines, acupressure, acupuncture, natural medication, and healing are some of those. And we dance along because if things cannot be explained by scientific methods, it cannot be true.

Definition of health varies from person to person. To some it means that nothing is really serious, for some it means not getting any worse, for other it is the visit to the doctor every year to get a nod of “all clear”. Seldom did it mean zero health problems. And so we get by with taking aspirins and painkillers and live with aches and pains that we associate with certain infective bug, overwork, or ageing.

The problem with chemically formulated drugs and medicines is that, one; it remedies a part of the body but destroys another, often the liver. Two, it has questionable benefits that simple observation will tell you that if the medication prescribed by the physician is not getting the desired result, an alternative prescription will be given (a physician that has a reputation for having a higher batting average will be called as “good” and so will the physicians fees be).

Third, when a part of the body fails to normally function caused by the drug, it will be termed as side effects. Fourth, when the body acclimatizes to the drug prescribed, we are in effect sentencing our body to a lifetime of medication. Fifth, behind all the advances claimed, it does not really increase the average lifespan. Like the rest of the world, we still are satisfied if we hit the magic mark of seventy years. Sixth, it is so expensive to be a hit and miss thing which often it really is. Scientific claims will be otherwise but everybody can claim. Result though will tell you differently.

For most of us, it has not been recognized that there is an alternative to a life sentence of medication. That there are medications not only to cure whatever ails but to build the reserves and boost the system so that ailments are reversed naturally. When the system is made healthier and reserves are built, we could in part avoid the doctor whose typical remedy is give us drugs, when drugs will not work, chop parts of our body, and prescribe drugs more.

In the ancient world, our forebears have already recognized that there are only two kinds of plants, that which is good for food and that which is better for healing. Even animals know this. Our house pets like dogs, cats, and chickens will forage for a particular grass of herb when they are not feeling well. Sooner this is vomited and the animal heals. In eastern cultures, these natural methods have been the basis for healing. Their life average expectancy is not longer than seventy years but ours is not longer either. The difference lies in the money, the trouble spent and for the most part, the absence of chronic pains and suffering.

Herbal medicines, natural medication and healing do just that. Relieve the suffering and health anxiety naturally so we have time to enjoy more of life without the drugs that gives temporary eight-hour solutions until the pain strikes again.

Epistle 30 – The Masters

It’s Masters golf tournament time and as I marvel at the splendor of Augusta National from the athletic position of my Lay-Z-Boy, I can’t help but compare the similarities of this grand event with my own early golf career. It all began inauspiciously when I was 15 and my brother dragged me along for a round of golf with a couple of his cronies on a hot Saturday afternoon. They claimed that I was essential to complete their foursome, but their hidden agenda was to torture me beyond human endurance. For thirteen holes I thrashed through the weeds of a course lovingly known by the locals as Goat Hill, spraying an assortment of golf balls in all directions and cutting nasty smiley faces in them out of spite. (That was back when golf balls could actually be cut, revealing a mass of rubber bands wrapped around a tiny rubber ball.) The clubs loaned to me had names like Cleek, Mashie and Spoon, sounding more apt for lunch than golf and serving neither.

My brother and his sick friends kept silent about my play as long as I kept up. If I was too wayward, they politely suggested I take a 10 for the hole and join them on the next tee, assuming I could find it from whatever wasteland I was lost in. Undaunted, I trudged on through the heat, knowing that my first round of golf had to end sometime. And then the unimaginable happened. Deep within the abyss of the sports world, the golf gods smiled upon me. On the 14^th tee I hit a drive that actually landed in the fairway! Can you imagine that? The fairway, for God’s sake. Confidently, I strode up to my ball, basking in the glow of athletic achievement, and the envy of my fellow competitors. As though I actually knew what I was doing, I survey the scene, pulled out my Brassie, waggled it a few times for effect, and then gracefully launched the ball toward . . . ohmygod . . .the green! Yes, children, as impossible as it seems, it went toward the green. Not on it, but at it, and close enough to be deemed a success.

My chip onto the green was less than sterling, a scruffy looking shot that stubbornly came to a halt after about 6 feet of unattractive squirming, leaving me 10 more feet to the hole. Taking the advice of my companions, I marked my ball, spit on it and cleaned it on my pants, and then walked purposefully around the hole, pretending to notice every nuance in the green. Then, borrowing another tip from the greats, I closed one eye and held the putter in the air between my forefinger and my thumb, thereby allowing gravity to show me which way the putt would break. (Don’t ask me why.) Finally, without a clue, I hitched up my trousers like Arnold Palmer and confidently topped the ball with my putter in the general direction of the hole. For an eternity the ball rolled and hopped, turning this way and that, until finally . . . finally . . . it went in! I made par! I had reached the zenith of the golf world in only fourteen holes.

Preferring to go out on top rather than hang on long after my skills had diminished, I dropped my putter right there by the fourteenth green and marched off the course, the hysterical gallery parting like the Red Sea. An hour later, back in the clubhouse, my brother and his sweaty pals ordered a frosty pitcher of beer. Noticing my Coke was long gone, they generously insisted that we crown my laurels by filling my glass with beer, at which time the dragon-lady of the 19^th Hole Grill swooped in, demanding to see my ID. My fellow golfers claimed they didn’t even know me and I had brazenly taken their beer without their permission, at which point I was marched out to the parking lot by the earlobe.

Perhaps my early golf venue was not the magnificence of Augusta National, but I can still say I went out on top . . . until I took up the cursed sport again 15 years later.

We Will Win

Over the years, people have become more and more conscious about which food to eat to stay healthy. Over the years too, several recommendations have been advised. To this end, books were written, keep fit programs were sold and advices followed. The average lifespan though stayed the same, seventy years, much the same as centuries ago.

What are the foods to eat to stay healthy? Everything but in moderation

Doesn’t it sound very much like what the Hebrew book says?” Lifespan of seventy years”, “all food have been cleansed”, “avoid gluttony?” Through all these years, this has never been challenged. This fact remained sure and true. If ever, several adverts have already claimed superior benefits of their weight reducing, health-inducing product. What the adverts succeeded at was over-selling and over- highlighting their claims but never challenged this fact. But that is always true with commercialism. In this age where cents and dimes are often the rule of the day, there is no compunction to oversell a product to the point of using scare tactics for the targeted consumer to get their attention and possibly draw out their wallets and part with their money.

Do not fall for fad foods. If they were true, some of them should have stayed on in the market and have grown in market share as far as food choices are concerned. Nothing has and nothing will, because the price paid is too high for the benefit received and people eventually could see through that.

Instead eat food that tastes good. Eat all foods that are recommended in the good old food chart. The body needs sodium, it helps cleanse the body and prevent diseases. The body needs fat. Fat insulates us from the elements and helps keep our body lubricated as machines are lubricated. Fat also keeps our skin supple and feeling younger. Have protein in the diet, you cannot do with less of it especially when in the healing and during the growing up years. Calories are needed to maintain energy levels so is sugar. But then everything has to be taken in the right amounts and quantities. Everything in moderation

The problem is not the food; the problem is the attitude towards food. It is the preference of one food group over the other that keeps the system unbalanced and wanting of nutrients that weakens the body. It is the lifestyle that prevents us or allows excuses not to eat right but have fast food as the usual recourse.

Aside from the food groups that have been classified by science, there are only two types of food in nature that are provided to us. One is food for nutrition, the other are food for medicine and healing. Examples of these are garlic, turmeric and other herbs too many to mention. Every food has its own function and counter action. Spinach has oxalic acid and oranges have counter effects bad for certain blood types, eating raw exposes us to certain microorganisms etc. Nonsense, every food has properties different and tends to counter balance another food.

In an effort to sell a product, a brand, or an idea, what results is a scare that effects in limiting us with food choices often to those that we do not enjoy. The limiting of food choices keeps on evolving that if everything that is heard or advertised is listened to, nothing is worthy of eating anymore.

Every region on earth will always provide a balanced food source for that region. Foods grown in the US are different from those grown in China. But when examined closely, the tastes may change but the same balancing effect in the diet is present, anywhere in the world. That should tell us something. The earth provides everything for our enjoyment and health. Anyone who is not trying to sell anything will say the same thing, “that we should eat all the food groups in correct quantities and proportions”. That way we enjoy life, that way we stay truly healthy.