|
MEDITATION
Maximize your brainpower with
meditation.
Meditation may stimulate the growth of
brain tissue and reduce cognitive decline sometimes associated
with aging. In a small study, people who meditated exhibited
increased thickness in brain regions involved in attention and
sensory perception compared to people of the same age who did
not meditate. Take a few minutes every morning and evening to
calm your mind and focus your thoughts.
RealAge
Benefit: Taking care of your emotional health and well-being
can make your RealAge up to 16 years younger.
RealAge
Health Search: Learn more about the health benefits of
meditation with the latest research from our expert-driven
search engine.
*********************************************
I found
the below article on a blog. I found it interesting as I
think it relates to what we may feel when we have lost a
relationship with an adult child. We need to find ways
to replace that void by finding new interests and living life
fuller. It is definitely time for us to become the
"Me" generation and party on!
Why Adults Need to Party
Much More:
The Growing Lonliness
Epicdemic in America and Beyond
By
Brian Vazily
I’ll bet you need to enjoy
life more. In particular, I’ll bet you need to party more.
Perhaps that sounds
juvenile. Nonetheless, the statement is actually especially true if
your high school and college years are long behind you. It is
even truer if you are married and truest of all if you also
have children and even grandchildren. You need to party
more.
See,
common knowledge says we're increasingly connected
to one another. But that’s a load of nonsense. Oh sure,
with the Web, email, instant messaging, cell phones, real-time
production and distribution technologies, big and fast planes
and all the rest, the world is indeed smaller and smaller in
terms of our access to one another’s surfaces – we can now
communicate basic thoughts, instructions, opinions, pictures
and videos to those down the street or on the other side of
the world in moments. We can order flowers online today and
hand them to our significant others tomorrow – flowers that
just a few days before were still attached to their roots in
Ecuadorian greenhouses or Chinese
fields.
That’s all neat-o.
But speed and volume of
contact have nothing to do with depth of contact. You can
exchange requests via email and cell phone with hundreds of
people per day every day, you can blast out your opinion on
dozens of news stories and other topics via the Web in a
matter of hours, you can post videos of yourself on YouTube
for tens of thousands to see, you can even get a TV show and
spout your opinion to millions, but that is all merely
presenting the surfaces you want others to see. That is not
opening yourself emotionally to anyone, nor is it allowing
others to open themselves personally to you. No face-to-face,
no mutual letting down the guard and being real, no shared
vulnerability, no experiencing one another’s physical energy
in response to intense conversation and experiencing the stuff
of life together. Instead, from behind your computer monitor,
your cubicle walls, your office door, or the fortress of your
home and vehicle, it is all a script. A form of hiding.
Bonding, if it can even be
called that, is awfully tenuous when it is merely
surface-to-surface.
And so with everything
cited above -- and with  the increasing length of time
people spend working, the decreasing amount of time people
spend on leisure activities (now at its lowest level since
World War II in the U.S.), the hefty chunk of what leisure
time they do have wasted on watching TV, and other factors --
we are more isolated from experiencing the depths of one
another than at any time in human
history.
We are very lonely.
In fact, those who
research such things say we are experiencing a loneliness
epidemic. A recent study in the Journal of Clinical Nursing
based on adults in the UK and Australia found that one in
three now consider themselves lonely there. Another recent
study published in the American Sociological Review found that
the average American now has only two close friends in whom
they can confide on important matters – down from an average
of three in 1985. Those who say they have NO ONE to talk to on
a personal level went from 10 percent in 1985 to almost 25
percent in 2004. An additional 19 percent had only one
confidant – usually their spouse.
Of course, the older you
are the more likely it is that you don’t need statistics like
these to confirm the growing sense of isolation and loneliness
in the U.S. and apparently elsewhere in the Western world; you
can probably cite many external examples of it, you likely
feel it yourself, and you likely already know that in addition
to being one of the worst feelings one can have, lonelieness
poses real health risks including a weakened immune
system.
I am 37 years old, perhaps
young according to at least some people reading this (I hope),
but I have definitely seen and felt a strong societal shift to
increased isolation and loneliness in my lifetime. For
example, in the neighborhood I grew up in on the northwest
side of Chicago, neighbors really did get to know their
neighbors in-depth. There were backyard get-togethers, block
parties, and evening socials in front rooms or on front steps.
The same was typical for my relatives who lived in different
neighborhoods throughout Illinois and the U.S. Meanwhile, if
they weren’t being forced to do homework or chores or to go to
sleep, the neighborhood kids -- me included -- spent their
lives with each other at the park, in the alley, down the
street, or somewhere (anywhere!) outside.
Today we’re lucky if we
even know the first names of the people who live next door and
across the street from us. Today many kids seem to think of
the outside as that place you step through to move between
buildings and vehicles. A few days ago where I live now there
was a snowstorm and – whereas in my youth that would
inevitably mean two thousand and six kids rolling it, throwing
it, sledding on it, and (the bad boys) skitching on it as soon
as school let out – there has only been one pair of children
(out of many I see get off the school bus and enter their
homes) who has played in it since. In front of people’s houses
on street after street around here, the snow lies
untouched.
Which is all to say, I’ll
bet you need to party more.
Not “party” in the limited
college fraternity sense (though if that is what you desire,
well, just be careful out there.) Instead, party in the sense
of regularly getting together with people aside from or in
addition to the one or two you may already be lucky enough to
confide in to do something (anything!) enjoyable. This might
be something you currently appreciate, like dancing, playing
board games, praying, knitting, discussing books, singing, or
simply talking, or something new you always wanted to try
since novelty usually adds an additional layer of enjoyment.
The real purpose, of
course, is to open up, let go, enjoy and be with other people …
and thereby really experience those other people, which as
social beings is what we ultimately thrive on, and how we
ultimately expand ourselves. Away goes that sense of
isolation, and a real new friend or two is often also made in
the process.
No human is an island. It
doesn’t matter if you’re trying to shield yourself with the
biggest computer monitor or sleekest cell phone out there. It
doesn’t matter if your voice is carried on every TV in the
country or if you’re a millionaire or billionaire. Lonely and
despondent kings and queens are a cliché. Side-by-side and
face-to-face we need to experience the depths and energies of
other people, and to open ourselves so others can experience
ours. The more the merrier. If that is being juvenile, then
being juvenile is about the healthiest thing you can
be.
So party
on.
| 
