DAY 92 – MANAGING THE HUMAN HOUSEHOLD
Ten years ago while in college I had an assignment to do a paper on the economy. We had the freedom to take this paper anywhere we wanted to go with it. While I did not know that much about the economy, I started by looking up the word in the dictionary. What I found was something that I did not expect and turned this paper into a different way of thinking about the human world.
The word economy has its origins from the latin word oeconomia and greek word oikonomia and refers to managing the household. Normally when I think about the economy I think about the financial aspects of my country where people go to work to make money in order to have and to do things. But when I started to think about managing the household my thoughts turned to the other aspects of life that go beyond the financial end.
Living our lives we want life to go smoothly. No one wants to have situations that become problematic even when it quickly disappears. Worse yet, we do not want to experience situations that escalate into something that is psychologically disturbing and emotionally taxing. At our most inner core human beings want to find inner harmony in all that we do where personal enjoyment and inner peace enables us to experience loving feelings and show loving actions to all who we meet.
It is a shame that we have the problems that we do not want to have when so many of our difficulties are preventable. It is doable that every human being can have nutritious food to eat, clean water to drink, a decent place to live in and adequate clothing to wear. It is doable that every human being can have harmonious interactions and relationships. It is doable that every human being can live in harmony with their fellow human beings who belong to a different nationality, religion, race, ethnicity or sexual orientation than themself. It is doable that people can experience enjoyment in many of their personal wants. It is doable that human beings can have physical health and psychological wellness. It is doable that human beings can have a good education and have the knowledge that can create a personally better life and create a collectively better world. It is doable that people can have a transportation system that meets their ability to go places and transport products around the planet. It is doable that human beings everywhere on this planet can have an energy supply. It is doable that human beings can contribute towards helping the earth to become a clean and sustainable planet. Achieving the nine basic requirements for a better life and better world for all of humanity is doable.
Experiencing difficulties, even though they have the potential to be prevented, means that we are not managing the human household properly. Everywhere around the planet people are going through the same kind of situations that generations in the past have had to deal with. In those previous generations our ancestors had to persevere through their difficulties whether they lasted a short time or continued on for a lifetime. Today we are persevering through our present day difficulties as our ancestors had to do. Why is it that human beings, whether then or now, have not found, implemented and developed solutions for their problematic situations and why haven’t solutions that can last and stand the test of time been easily available and passed on for each generation to use for their benefit?
An important and essential aspect of managing the human household for everyone’s benefit is setting up our world where people can learn from one another the insights that solve our difficulties. In addition, today’s social outlets on the internet can be used as an instrumental vehicle for organizing people to work together for that better future within their community. To get our world to be a better place sooner than later we do not have to carry on as we always have in a static manner nor do we need real and beneficial changes to develop over decades either. We have the capability to use the desire for something better to carry us to greater heights in the here and now.
Think about something in your life or the life of a loved one that you wish had never occurred. Were you bullied as a kid that left you emotionally traumatized? Was your spouse verbally vilified by his or her parents that left your spouse an angry and excitable person who vilifies you and your children? Was one of your children sexually assaulted and has developed an alcohol and drug addiction because of it? Was your parents financially ruined because of a national economic catastrophe that left all of you homeless? Were you the victim of racial, religious, ethnic or sexual orientation bias where you were prevented from living a better life or were physically assaulted and left for dead? Were you born in a war torn nation that forced your parents to become migrants in a neighboring nation? Were you and your family the victims of a crime that left an emotional scar? Did you live through a category 5 hurricane that devastated the entire region in which you lived?
These and many other situations are the unwanted negative life experiences that human beings have to go through. They play havoc with the lives of those who are at the wrong end of it. Human beings have often tried to lend a helping hand to those who fall victim to the unwanted but there has been an overriding perception that it is up to each of us an individual to take personal responsibility to fix the unwanted chapters in one’s own personal life.
Managing the human household properly requires us to be proactive in helping one another to have fewer personal difficulties as well as being proactive in helping to establish a collectively better world with fewer societal problems. Human beings around the planet need to be in sync with one another where we become part of a cooperative effort that enables us to swim upstream together instead of fighting a never ending current that prevents us from gaining real and lasting changes for the better.
Our best approach to manage the human household with long lasting beneficial consequences is to reach someone while they are young before they develop thought and behavior habits that cause themselves, others or our earth problems. By developing more in-depth understanding about life at a younger age it can stay with each of us throughout our lifetimes and can be the focus each of us needs to create inner harmony within oneself. Such inner harmony can be the essential ingredient that brings each of us to a peaceful place that enables us to calmly and thoughtfully live our lives in a concerted effort to make life better for all of mankind.
While the word economy today is concerned with the financial end of the work we do and what we have, there is so much more to life when we look at the concept of managing the human household. Every personal relationship is a one on one interaction and for harmony to take place each person has to be fully aware of the type of thoughts and behaviors they are having that contribute towards another person finding it a pleasing experience. Every workplace requires the people involved in it to be not only focused on the work but to be treated well by all who they work with and for. Everyone’s health needs requires us to take into consideration how we go about living our lives so there aren’t any negative health repercussions from how we are carrying out our affairs. Every person’s sense of self-worth requires us to treat everyone with kindness, consideration, respect and dignity. When we can go beyond the financial part of the human world we can see that each and every human being has an important role to play in making this a better world not only for oneself but also for our fellow human beings.
I now realize that we can relish in the fact that we are part of something bigger than oneself while not losing sight of one’s own importance as a human being. Acting simultaneously on behalf of oneself and on behalf of our fellow human beings may seem unlikely but when it is achieved we will be managing the human household where human difficulties are minuscule and where everyone thrives in every way possible.