Wrongly Wired!

Where and When did our Wiring go Wrong?

Due to my recent flu I was a bit in grumpy mode, and feeling a bit braindead and hence not being able to write made me even grumpier.

However, due to the fact that I didn’t have an appetite either I quickly lost the pounds that I had piled on during the holidays and not only that: The intake of only small amounts of healthy food made me actually feel really good.

I guess the body knows – and shows – what’s good for it when you are sick!

I have to admit: Although I enjoyed the cakes and sweets and the voluptuous dinners during the holidays – I felt worse by the day. And every night when I didn’t sleep well I told myself to stop it, and every morning the smell of Nutella cream, fresh bread and cakes was killing me.

And that’s why I’m asking myself: When did it happen that my brain wiring went so wrong?

Scientists do these experiments with little children to find out at what time in live they can comprehend certain things. Like up to the certain age little children don’t feel disgust and would have a drink despite some poo (it was fake, thank God) swimming in it. In another test a child is put in front of a small plate of sweets and asked to wait for 5 minutes to then get a huge pile of sweets. But if it would eat from the small plate it wouldn’t get the big one.

The kids up to a certain age just can’t comprehend the meaning of ‘later’ despite the visible reward right in front of them.

And we grown ups seem to have lost that concept as well – just a bit the other way round. We surely would be able to wait the 5 minutes to greedily stuff our heads with the reward portion. What I mean is, that we KNOW that we will feel bad afterwards, we KNOW that alcohol and coffee is not good for us, we KNOW that not moving our body gives us the back pain – and nevertheless: We DO it!

We know that later in the closer future we will feel bad; in body and mind - and we know that later in a further ahead future we will have brought ourselves into an early grave. Actually, I wouldn’t even mind that. Once it’s over, it’s over – what I do mind is that it will hurt so much until I will get there. All the diseases creeping up, all these old age symptoms… I’m not worried about death, I’m worried about being chronically ill before.

The other day I’ve seen a ‘Horizon’ series at the telly and it was about certain areas in the world where people get overproportional often more than hundred years old. One island of Japan has loads of old, healthy people. And they don’t even think about what they are doing. They live on a healthy diet, they move about a lot - 100 something years and playing croquet like a youngster. They don’t fall for temptations firstly, because there are none and secondly, because it doesn’t occur to them that they could. Temptations is not a concept that seem to exist for them.

They seem to be eating at a given time of the day, and are so used to it that for the rest of the day they just don’t think about food. As opposed to me thinking about food at every waking second.

However, they researched people of that culture who had moved to some other part of the world – and they have all the civilisatory symptoms as we all know them. And what struck me most were the faces:

These stone age old people had lovely, marvellously unwrinkly, happy faces. They were giggling and laughing with their eyes and one could tell that these people are not just happy in the moment, but truly content. While all the others looked dull and unhappy – like the face I know so well from my bathroom mirror.

And again: Where on earth did my wiring go wrong? And can I re-wire, please?

There are so many remedies on the market, from probiotic food to hypnosis. If it were that easy, given the number of products and procedures, we already should have made it to a better life.

It sort of dawns on me that the solution only can lie within ourselves. We have to become so fed up with what we are doing to ourselves, that WE want to change it.

I have come quite a long way already, but this food addiction drives me nuts. Why on earth is fun and rewards always intertwined with food and drink? Well it’s quick for starters, it’s something you can give to yourself instantly. A nice bath might be a treat, but it cost you an hour and a good bathroom cleaning session afterwards – naaa, not working. Neither does shopping, or only to an extent and then it becomes unhealthy as well.

So I will have to put up with the fact that there are no easy rewards and that the trick might be in leading a life that doesn’t need rewards. Probably a good life IS the reward!

Love