DAY 18 – BASIC REQUIREMENTS FOR A BETTER LIFE AND BETTER WORLD

I am listening to a radio talk show about problems people are having and the term better life came up a few times. I have heard people over and over again say they want a better life and want to live in a better world. The one thing I never heard was no one had defined what constitutes a better life and better world.

As I started to think about this the answer seemed to be right in front of me for my entire life. Dealing with everyday living did not allow me to break life down into simple to understand categories. It was as if I was incapable of realistically seeing the forest while taking a walk in the forest. The obvious wasn’t so obvious only because I was constantly doing things in the moment that took me away from seeing life in its totality.

To comprehend what are the component parts that make life better, I began to observe people in their everyday lives. I saw what they were doing and asked them what they wanted out of life. In most cases people are living their lives in very similar fashion and wanting the same things.

After many months of watching and listening, a few things stood out. First and foremost, people require water, food, shelter and clothing in order to survive. People interact and have personal relationships with other people and want harmony to occur within their interactions and relationships. People are members of various nationalities, races, religions, ethnicities and sexual orientations and want harmony to exist between people belonging to these different groups. People enjoy having and doing certain things and personal wants are a significant part of everyone’s life. People need physical health and psychological wellness. People need an education and knowledge about life. Society as a whole requires a transportation system and an energy supply. Finally, and an absolute necessity, is a clean and sustainable earth.

Our economic and governmental systems are all related to fulfilling, in one form or another, these basic requirements. Whether it is research, mining of the earth’s resources, manufacturing and distribution of materials and products or governmental actions, humanity uses our time and efforts in an attempt to help make life better. Most of the time our actions are beneficial but there are situations where they do not meet the challenges to fix problems or they create new and unintended difficulties.

When a specific aspect of life appears disjointed and problematic we can now look at something not working properly in one or more of these nine areas. Solutions to human difficulties that previously seemed intermittent, elusive or non-existent can now be thought of differently because we can now analyze life from the perspective of a holistic harmony that leads to an individual inner harmony based on achieving these nine basic requirements.

After thinking about the term better life I now realize that the life and world that human beings desire is directly related to each and every human being achieving all of these nine basic requirements.