We have forgotten the healing power of being, solitude, nature, meaningful work, daily practices, easy routines, friendships and loving our neighbor. We avoid the simple, the daily, the ordinary and mundane to pursue complex and costly products, formulas and lifestyles of happiness. Our world’s monoculture has produced a nonstop curation of customized pleasures that have resulted in us becoming deaf, dumb and blind to the truth. Likewise, the constant pursuit of pleasure keeps us living empty handed, emotionally numb, mentally exhausted, lonely and physically drained.
Look around, we are suffering from epidemics of diet-related disease and sickness, depression, anxiety, suicide, physical breakdown, disconnection, boredom and loneliness in a culture that is committed to satisfying all our pleasures.
Ask yourself…How long have you tried to live off the crumbs of pleasure as you starve for the daily nourishment that you need to live your real life? Have you sacrificed the health of your spirit, heart, mind, body and relationships to string together temporary moments of pleasure? Has pleasure ever produced real comfort, security, peace and rest?
Without a doubt, we are made for pleasure but years of being told to pull ourselves up by our own proverbial bootstraps, to believe in a nauseating version of consumerism and to embrace our entitlement to pleasure has forced us to live in a culture where we are not helping each other remember who we are and how we are naturally designed to live in healthy relationships with ourselves, our neighbors and our world.
In a culture built on consumerism, there is no space or time to Be, because we are expected to be so busy living as consumers and chasing the latest promises of pleasure. In submitting to consumerism’s rules, beliefs, systems, formulas and definitions, we have unwittingly avoided the necessary truths, practices, rhythms, routines and relationships found in particular way of life that gives us the pleasure that we are naturally made to experience.
It’s time to remember who we are and how we are designed as human beings to be healthy and whole, and to discover the pleasure that awaits us in living in truth and love, in giving mercy and kindness, in being good, in being known and accepted and in pursuing the betterment of our neighbors, community and world.
Remember health starts at home and it starts with us taking the responsibility to be honest with ourselves and to love ourselves well. Return to the basics with me and create the space for health restoration. Vivealchemy.com
DeeAnn Dean 