Carpe diem
of course. It is pragmatic in many respects. Self- esteem or self- worth and dignity do not wear a price tag. When we have it or nurture it, we have a fair degree of equanimity and balance. When we seek it or lose it in the face of fame or great fortune, we wander in a wasteland of despair.
These thoughts come to the fore also at a time when icons of music or popular culture fall from their lofty pedestals – like Whitney Houston who at 48 wastes away and dies a miserable death because of a lethal addiction to drugs. Over two years ago, Michael Jackson, another music legend who defined a generation of music and popular ethos, also succumbed to a deadly addiction to painkillers. Amy Winehouse, another young singer of global acclaim, drinks herself to death last year.
Why do they with their prodigious talent, vast fortune and global popularity seek the need for affirmation or comfort and turn to drugs for it? Psychologists point to an inner vacuum, a deep void of melancholy and pain that no amount of material wealth could fill. They seek what is essential and simple – balance and peace of mind, a happy home or family, self- respect. In the end the low energies of pride, fear and greed pull them into a vortex of inner displacement and imbalance.
This is not to preach from a perch, as it were. Or to wax philosophical. But I take to heart the need for individual and collective healing. There is much brokenness in the world and in our lives. This even manifests itself in the brokenness and degradation of our lifesupport systems – water, air, land, seas, forests. This is exhibited even in the heaps of noxious waste that clog our cities or pollute our bodies or water. It is metaphorical of the deadly cocaine that pollutes the body and saps the health of a druguser, famous or not.
We are told that health is wealth, and without good health nothing else really matters. But healthy living does not simply mean the right diet or exercise. It means having the right frame of mind or outlook, the capacity to rise above negative energy and destructive ego, so as to tap into greater energies of hope and kindness.
Whose aphorism was it that correctly pointed to our modern, harried predisposition to compromise health as we work hard to make money, and later spend that money to regain good health? Indeed, what does it profit us if in the end if we earn and accumulate fame, wealth and power, but lose out on life and miss its daily abundance of simple joys and miracles?
Carpe diem. Seize each day.