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A Heart Beats Away!

“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.”
-Joseph Campbell
The Mars Orbiter Camera captured this image of a heart-shaped hill some 279 yards wide on the south polar region of the planet.

The human race has developed the technology to peer millions of miles out into space and to project and reflect sentiments of love and care from a distant planet.  Man is also capable of looking deep within the human body to witness beating heart cells, awed by the persistence of nature.

Curiously, whenever a new year marches in we become aware of being a bit off beat and do a little hop,skip and jump to try and catch up. Yes, I'm speaking of resolutions and goals for the new year. It's a natural urge: to grow and improve.

Highly evolved as we are, we tend to begin each year with similar declarations. Similar to those of others and similar to our lists of years past.

We all do some amazing things out there in the world. Most of us create, change, save and/or better the lives of others. Yet when it comes to those things we'd like to do for ourselves, it's stop procrastinating, drink more water, lose weight, etc. Don't we deserve all of that and more?

I like the idea of developing a new habit every month, as this blog suggested in 2006. Aside from the author's mundane "drink more water" habit, his thesis sounds much more doable than an entire list of resolutions to be worked on from Day One. What do you really want to be, do or have in the new year? Let's come up with goals that will make our old resolutions look timid and meager.

The old year is usually represented by a weary Father Time, hobbling off into oblivion and the new year comes eagerly crawling in as a baby. Let's resolve to put some joy into this next year, let's make this baby laugh with glee!

Full Moon

The emancipation of our physical nature is in attaining health, of our social being in attaining goodness, and of our self in attaining love.-Rabindranath Tagore

Photo: Gren

Pisa Change

"Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better."
-- Sydney J. Harris
It's that time of the year when we begin to take stock of the old and look forward to a year of living 'new and improved'. If you're looking at the same old issues as last year, in health or career, an article from Fast Company magazine entitled Change or Die, might be of interest.

In November 2004, IBM held a Global Innovation conference and gathered some of the most creative thinkers to offer solutions to some major problems.

The health care crisis was the first one approached. Dr. Edward Miller, the dean of the medical school of Johns Hopkins University, revealed that some 600,000 people a year in the United States undergo bypass surgery, and 1.3 million heart patients have angioplasties. All at a total cost of approximately $30 billion. About half the time, the bypass grafts fail in a few years and the angioplasties, in a few months.

The causes of reoccurrence are complex, but Dr. Miller added that studies repeatedly show that two years after bypass grafting, 90% of the people have not changed their lifestyle.

The founder of the Global Medical Forum, Dr. Raphael Levey, told conference attendees that a small percentage of the population consumes the majority of the health-care budget for diseases that are behavioral issues. The article mentions too much smoking, drinking, eating and stress and not enough exercise.

Nothing new there. What continues to puzzle even the world's greatest thinkers is: how do you motivate people to change?

Dr. Dean Ornish is cited as one who may have a handle on it by offering people the "joy of living" as opposed to the "fear of dying". He institutes radical changes so that the effects to the way people feel are dramatic and quick.            

 The Leaning Tower of Pisa,although it was meant to be a vertical tower, started to incline during construction. Efforts to keep the tower from toppling will probably be constant due to its consistent interaction with the soil at its foundation. Retaining the tilt, however, is important to the tower's identity and to the town of Pisa. In keeping with the beginning quote..."what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better."

That might work for humans, if we had the lifespan of the Tower of Pisa.

Resource: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/94/open_change-or-die.html

Photo: Wikipedia, The Leaning Tower of Pisa