Harmony of The Trinity. Mind, Body, and Soul
“Can I please have some peace and quiet?” “I’m not talking, I’m not talking either.” “I just need a moment to think.” “About what?” “That’s what we are here for.” "Do you have a headache?" "Is it your back again?" "Want to meditate?" “Can we all please just get along?”
War. That’s what it’s been like living with our exhausted minds for the past 60 plus years. War. That’s what it’s been like getting our bodies to do things, mostly work, that it doesn’t want to do for the past 60 plus years. War. That’s what it’s been like for 60 plus years when our souls are not at peace.
We have been fighting against ourselves for 6 decades and longer. This battle for control has been exhausting. A virtual war within ourselves. Just when you think your body is winning, you look down at that bulging waistline and see physically that it’s not. Just when you think your mind has won, because of mental fatigue, you lock your keys in the car. Just when you think that you have found Zen, you lose focus. "Tumbling Towers". Of all the battles that come with aging, finding a way to get these three to play nicely together, to get along, has to be the most challenging. Just as with many of you, I read because I enjoy learning and literature, and our minds require mental exercise. The same holds true for me when it comes to physical training and exercise. I train, like many of you, because I, we want to remain healthy, we want our bodies to be in shape. When our bodies look good, more often than not, we feel good.
This leads finally to our Soul, and its role. How we pray, and whom we pray to is a matter of personal preferences, and I shall not speak for everyone. Thankfully, for many of us, prayer helps our Souls find peace in our beliefs and solidifies our faith. Internally, and metaphysically when our Souls are at peace nothing seems to harm or bother us. It's as if we are impervious, and all feels right within our world. Conversely, when our Souls are not at peace, strife and turmoil dominate. The components that make up The Harmony of the Trinity, require infinite amounts of time, and each seemingly never feels that it's getting the proper share of that time. They each have separate requirements, and dividing something by 3 is always challenging. Sometimes, at least for me, a smooth 10-year-old Single Malt Scotch, can sedate my mental anguish much better than aspirin, at least temporarily. Unfortunately, drinking is not the healthiest of methods for sedation of my mind. Exercise seems like the perfect method to calm the body. However, exercise to a point where pain becomes the only gain, and every muscle seems to hurt, pushes the body beyond its limits and does more harm than good. As for our Souls, they can be buoyed through prayer equivalent to the faith of an Imam, a Priest, a Monk, or a Rabi. Sadly, what happens if through our faith we find out that we have invested in a person who misused our trust? This pain can be emotionally earth shattering, leaving even the most faithful, ambivalent. Aging doesn’t always insulate us from ourselves or shield us from our deepest fears of the future. A dream you had as a child, that frightened you, is not always conquered when we become adults. So too with growing older. Aging, getting older, can create a looming sense of dread that is only exacerbated by what we consciously, and subconsciously start thinking about to the point of obsession; like how our will bodies look as we grow older; that pinch of extra skin where it wasn't before; being forced, possibly due to balding, to change our hair style, or what and whom will we now follow after the loss of influential leader. These events may never actually occur, but at every turn the faith we have in ourselves begins to be routinely tested by a presumptive future.
The Harmony of the Trinity is one of the most important keys to being happy and confident about aging. Starting with our minds; as we age our minds must become less myopic and more omni percipient. What was a struggle in our youth, the ability to really focus, especially on something as abstract as the future, I believe becomes simpler as we age. The ability to focus on something specific now only requires us to put on our reading glasses, and our intensity is such that we can block out many more distractions in order to concentrate on the resolution of a specific situation or problem. Our mental focus is one of the keys to our survival and our success. The power of the mind demands respect. As a segway, as much as I enjoy watching sports on TV, I equally enjoy watching specials depicting animals in their natural habitat. What I have learned from watching hours and hours of PBS Nature, (narration by Sir David Attenborough), has been visually astonishing. An animal such as a Tiger is stunningly beautiful and strikingly terrorizing. Its power and voracity come with 3-inch retractable claws, and 4-inch canine teeth. It is the perfect example of strength, dexterity, and endurance. Tigers have an aura that creates incomparable fear in every animal in the forest. Fear permeates the air whenever his footprints are found. Unfortunately, with all this power its survival has limitations because it can't see into the future. A Tiger only has enough vision to see its next meal, or place of shelter. A beast this ferocious is not balanced by The Harmony of The Trinity, because a Tigers mind cannot think beyond tomorrow. A healthy functioning mind that can focus on today, tomorrow and beyond, is essential. Keeping a mind healthy and ensuring its growth and development are equal, if not greater than the challenges of finding food or a mate.
Many of us have dedicated our lives to our minds, mostly through our careers. Think of some of the greatest minds of the 20th and the 21st Century. A Robert Oppenheimer for example, he spent significant time deep in thought. The creation for the Atomic Bomb at a time when there were no computers defies comprehension. Shakespeare too spent endless hours deep in thought, writing works of prose that have withstood time. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, one of the greatest composers of all time and the creator of one-of-kind concertos. Closer to me was the great Donny Hathaway. A child prodigy at 4 years, his musical genius was unparalleled. These are just a few of the great minds of centuries past and present. A lifetime spent in thought. I mention these four amazing intellectual creators because they each have a single shared characteristic. Of the four, only Oppenheimer lived to be 62 years old, and he was ill before then, the rest all died in their 30's. The Mind may be essential for life, but a focus on the use of it does not ensure life much less longevity for human beings. Longevity requires that the mind be kept occupied, busy but not spoiled, and definitely not damaged by overuse either. Nothing can guarantee that The Mind will stay healthy, and functionally vibrant over the course of these many years. It will need help.
The Body is that help. The Body is like the Marines, marching over a hill and coming to the rescue. If you still feel connected to your muscles, if your heart beats like a thunderstorm in your chest, if your lungs fill with each breath like water jugs, if your loins can still be enticed, then your body is still sound. Many of us, including myself, have been athletes for most of our entire life. Physically competing at one thing or another for as long as we can remember. Staying physically fit is no guarantee of longevity, however, fitness does help significantly to ease the stresses to the mind, caused by aging. Can I, we, you still compete in physical competitions? Hell yeah…! To be clear, this website "60 is The New 40" is not here to challenge someone to a race in the Home Depot parking lot, although you could, or to challenge someone to a fist fight, again, although you could. However, I would strongly not suggest it. This website is more about drawing a complete picture of the refinement that we undergo as we get older. One of the major refinements is what occurs to our bodies. At this stage in our lives, our bodies have become our Saving Grace. A grace only disrupted by some uninvited guest, such as Arth Ri Tis. This scourge is the absolute bane of aging. This malady unscrupulously that attacks our bodies leaving no one safe. It relentlessly attacks our joints causing aches that regardless of movement. A pain seemingly sent to remind us that the battle never ends. Sitting still provides no relief either. Arth Ri Tis makes moving, which is essential to good health, very difficult. I suffer from this malady and no matter what I do it's always with me. What the heck! How can our bodies be like the Marines if every time we start running, we must stop and put some oil on our joints? My apologies for the diversion off topic, but If you are like me then you have tried everything and still there is no complete relief. Thank goodness for our Souls. Our Souls, our faith, our prayers are instrumental in helping us help to push through diabolical discomfort to find some relief of the physical and mental anguish.
Pain is comical, like the slapstick comedy of The Three Stooges. Our minds help our bodies to bravely endure pain, as if it were something laugh at. This is a practice that began more than 60 years ago, and we have nearly perfected it. Although, there shouldn't be anything funny about our bodies being in pain because hurting mentally or physically is not funny. But we laugh anyway. Speaking for myself, I, just as many of you, have fallen on basketball courts, tennis courts, baseball fields, and football fields so many times that I now have problems with my back and my hips. It has become so problematic that more than a few orthopedic doctors, at one time or another, have lined up to take bets on when I would crumble, and who was going to be there to hammer me back together. One after another they preached a lullaby of bone saws and titanium screws. It all began to look like a Mel Brooks movie; I fully expected one day for Gene Wilder to come out from behind an examination screen. However, since 2018 I have said, “No" to surgery. I have instead embarked on a personal mission. A mission that is determined to get the trinity to play nicely with each other. To work together, to help me. I have to admit, sometimes ever so briefly, the thought of reconsideration of surgery does come into view. But I am settled with my decision, because I believe in my soul that it can be done. My Soul, not to be confused with Soul Music, as this discussion is not about dancing, it’s about believing. There is no dancing around believing in yourself, either you do or you don't.
The Harmony of The Trinity is not easy to attain, and if you find the strength to attain it, maintaining it takes a lifetime. The Mind, our minds (the brain) are a marvel of design and functionality. This mass of fat, proteins, and carbohydrates that fills our craniums, weighs on average 3 pounds and most of that weigh is in fluid. A network of pathways and crevasses, wired together and connected by motor neurons that connect to every inch of the body. The irony of that the brain is that it's made up of 60% Fat, that's too funny. We spend our lives trying to lose fat, and the single greatest component within our bodies is mostly made up of Fat! Hence, pain is comical. The Mind must be exercised constantly, and not just through visual stimulation. That's just a cheat code and at best it's frivolous. A constant challenge for The mind requires exercise. It must be pushed to compute, to reason, to ponder, to think. Reading is always a great mental stimulus. Reading forces the mind to focus, to absorb text and convert its meaning, and then process it. There are varied opinions in the scientific community regarding how television, movies, and worst of all our hand-held devices (cell phones) affect the brain. I tend believe, that beyond the obvious graphics and computer enhanced visual effects, are no more than toys only designed to amuse The Mind. Like watching a fireworks show, after a while we are just waiting for the next explosion of light and sound, and because The Mind can become bored easily, to keep us engaged each explosion has to be bigger than the previous. The Mind is not stimulated by pundits, nor 24-hour news cycles of different people repeating the same thing over and over again. To follow is boring. A mind stuck in neutral will never go forward. To go forward The Mind must be challenged to choose and make the right choice from a host of options. Countless options. This is Learning. The Mind should never stop learning, searching for answers, and not from what others say, albeit often well intended. Research, digging for answers is what The Minds craves. Reading provides that research. How many books have we read this year? Are you reading any books? I have read that the average number of books we should read in a year is 12. Seems reasonable, 1 book a month, the number of pages is not relevant to this discussion. How much time do we really spend in the pursuit of keeping this 3lbs of mass moving forward. For our minds to function optimally, it doesn't matter whether it's Chess, Checkers, or Tic-Tac-Toe. No game is too simple and no challenge is too small. That's how we keep the Fat in our brains from getting bloated. Exercise.
The Body seems simple to manage, but it is not. The human body is extremely complex because it is in a state of constant change. First there's growth, physical growth, that naturally occurs during our life cycle. The transition and the stress that this growth places on the body cannot be understated. One day you are 4-10' and in 60 days you grow to 5 feet. That means that your body grew 2 inches in 60 days. In 60 days your bones stretched, your internal organs shifted and moved, your heart has to now accommodate these new demands. One day you weigh 75lbs, and because of diet, or the lack of a good one, and or health problems in less than a year, you now weigh 200lbs. You gained a 125lbs in less than a year. The stress placed on the heart can not be measure, and your Life Clock is being tampered with. The opposite can also occur, and you lose for the same reasons, 125lbs. Either way The Body is suffering. In high school former NBA center for the San Antonio Spurs, and NBA Hall of Fame inductee in 2009 David Robinson, astonishingly grew 16 to 21 inches between the time he was a junior in high school, to the time he was drafted into the NBA in 1989. Say again? That's 21 inches his body grew from 11th grade in 1982 to being drafted into the NBA in 1989, 7-1'. I believe because he was an athlete, his body was able to to sustain its health. The Body requires exercised daily. When was the last time you went for a walk? When was the last time you went for a jog or run? Rode a bike, a skateboard? Played a game that required you to move? It may not sound like much but just one sit-up and one push-up a night. Just one of each before you go to bed is the beginning of enough exercise and from that one, we add one more to each next week, then the following week we add two more of each. In three weeks, you can find yourself now doing as many 28 push-ups and 28 sit-ups a week. By adding 2 more of each every week and in less than 60 days; quietly, you are now doing nearly 80 push-ups and sit-ups a week. You will see the physical changes in yourself. This is what the body requires.
The Body absolutely Demands constant attention. To a point of obsession. Our physical form, and maintaining it, is exhaustive. This is the very reason why The Mind and The Body fight so hard against one another. They are fight for attention. Yes there are surgical alternatives, and although some are a matter of health, most if not all, are elective. The Body wants an ice cream sundae with strawberry syrup and peanuts. However, we a diabetic! We know that we are not supposed to be eating that! We know what it can and will do to us! Our mind is screaming NO! But our stomach is churning, and we are sweating and pacing the floor... This is how they battle, winner takes all. We must find the time to make each of them, Happy. That will require some sacrifice. "Honor Thy Body, and your Strength will Never get Old." We have to give up the minutia in our lives, the constant chatter that goes on around us, the useless affinity towards unhealthy behavior. Our body is comfortable with the immense demands we place upon it, because the reward is the healthy time we put back into it. Put some healthy time into your body daily.
Our Soul. My soul, your Soul is being attacked by the hours, the minutes, by the seconds; because our lives no longer have an off bottom. My phone is buzzing now! You're probably reading this on your phone. (Not while driving please) Access to us, is access to our Souls. AI infused devices, and companies don't communicate with us anymore; they explore, exploit us. Probe us. Constantly, constantly searching for a way in. A way into Us. No method is off-limits, the fight for our Souls is in perpetuity. For many of us, it can be overwhelming and there aren't enough tears for the silent pain and suffering it causes. Medication has become the answer for many, just swallow a pill. Been there, done that, and it doesn't work. Worse, when it does, the side effects are horrendous and the Harmony of the Trinity is inevitably disrupted. The damage that can caused is littered in the headlines of the news daily. The destruction of a Soul is not limited to just that single Soul. Since we are all in one way or another universally connected, "Whatever you do unto my brother, that you do unto me." Matthew 25:40. We can no longer allow a price to placed on our Souls. It's not for sale. It's not a chip, to be dangled or traded to the highest bidder. Our Souls are confounding, as there is no clear understanding of where it comes from or where it came from. No road map to blindly follow. Yes, there are plenty of rules and guidelines, norms and regulations to be followed. The guidelines and rules can be ambiguous. Lets us not forget the voices that we hear, ever so faintly consciously and subconsciously. Or is that me, or is there someone else I hear in my head? What's my motivation for doing this, and why do I feel it's right, even if it written as wrong? This, and more is the conundrum of The Soul. Mentally our minds want explanations. The Mind wants to know the answer, why right, when the way home is left? But because you, we had a feeling You made a left turn and it saved yours, and maybe a loved one's life. Why? What is faith, the mind asks? If you can't touch it, see it, or smell it? Unfortunately, The Soul doesn't answer questions, at least not to us... It doesn't sit-down and explain why there is no earthly explanation that decides the day, today, that your life, my life, will change because of what we believe. Our Souls are exercised through our Faith.
We are at this moment in time because we believed in ourselves, even when others didn’t. When others doubted us, we didn’t doubt ourselves. When things were so difficult that many opted for the easy way out, we didn’t. We believed, and we bet on us. It is about Faith. However, when we marry The Soul to The Body, and The Body, to The Mind we find Harmony. We find the chalice that everyone has been and is still looking for. If you believe in, you; if your mind can still distinguish chess from checkers but still enjoy both. iIf you move with purpose regardless of what hurts; then you have found it too. Sadly, it does take a virtual lifetime to find it, to find that balance.
“All Things are Possible By Your Faith.” I read that very thought-provoking phrase on a tee shirt in 2002 worn by my brother-in-law, Pastor Michael Peace. Its meaning after all these years has never left me and it is as true today as it was then. The successful relationship between The Mind, The Body, and The Soul is the key to a healthy life. This natural balance is an essential component for helping us to navigate aging. There is no "60 is The New 40" unless these forces are aligned. This is all part of Why and How we have made it to here; to this time; "60 is The new 40" is not a challenge to anyone of any age, but more a symbol that it can be done. If there is strength in numbers, then there is no greater strength than the harmonious balance between the Harmony of The Trinity.