The Heptagon of Life?
Self-reflection time: I had always thought that taking care of my physical self would cause the rest of it to fall in line. I ride a bike, I try to eat healthy foods, and I work out on a loose schedule. (A VERY loose schedule!) Only recently did I start wondering about the other Levels, or Dimensions, of Wellness.
After my recent epiphany in the hospital I decided to investigate and explore. In the early 90s, when a close friend was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he told me he was fighting it on all three levels: the Physical, the Emotional, and the Spiritual. I have since learned that there are indeed four more, with all but one identified after the arrival of Social Media: Intellectual, Social, Environmental, and Vocational. Seven total Levels-slash-Dimensions of Wellness. The Heptagon of Life!
So I looked at all of them one at a time and tried to understand how they all interact to form me, an aging, angst-ridden product of 1960s suburbia.
Level One is Physical. As I said above, I try to take care of myself by eating healthy foods, exercising, getting some good sleep and, of course, farting and pooping on a regular schedule. (That last one is very important to Boomers – and it may have something to do with why we are called Boomers. A bastard use of an onomatopoeia, if you will.) And although I can’t bench press 250 pounds like I could when I was 17, I’m prit-tee proud of being able to hoist a fully-laden fork all the way from plate to mouth several times per meal. I have noticed, however, that because I am left-handed, my left bicep is quite a bit bigger than the one on my right. Maybe I should try holding the fork in my right hand?
On to the next Level: Emotional. I admit that I teared up at the kindness lavished upon me by the hospital staff during and after my recent surgery. And by contrast, I got WAY too upset – cursing and flailing my arms and banging my hands on the steering wheel – when a road rager on the Interstate cut us off and then slammed on his brakes. An RV can’t stop on a dime, so by flailing and banging I countered his road rage with some of my own – being very careful so he couldn’t see me.
Suffice to say I am now striving for a much more even emotional keel that hopefully includes complete happiness. But until I deal with all of my curmudgeon tendencies I’m afraid it will be awhile. I am also quite happy that we live on a boat and I don’t have a lawn to protect.
(Aside: Where did the phrase “stop on a dime” come from? I don’t know of anything, except maybe a snail or an ant, that can stop on a dime. After all, that small coin is only about half an inch in diameter. Can you imagine going 35 miles per hour in a 30 MPH speed zone, slamming on your brakes, and expecting your car to stop within half an inch? I’ve tried it while driving my car. The flattened guy in the crosswalk didn’t like it at all. And he was roughly 240 dimes’ diameters away when I stepped on the pedal.)
Number Three on the List of Levels is Spiritual. In an earlier post I mentioned my epiphany at the hospital where they removed a small organ called the appendix, the function of which seems to be unknown by doctors, scientists, and wags who create Youtubes while living in the basements of their parents’ houses. We were on the road to Up North from Down South when Maria said I needed to get to a hospital immediately. A Divine Guiding Hand showed us the way, and for the next five days I was shown what true caring means – especially at the Spiritual level. As I’ve said in the past, I am not an outwardly religious man. But I did have religion instilled when I was young. My parents dutifully took my brothers and me to Sunday School every week while they sat in another room with pews and other adults and put $2 in a plate. In reality, I don’t think anyone there became spiritually involved from sitting in pews and putting cash in plates. My recent experience, however, allowed me to again get in touch with that wonderfully fulfilling and inspiring level.
Next up: Intellectual. How to exercise a brain? Hint: It’s not a mobile game where the ads claim they are “designed for seniors to challenge and stimulate their brains and prevent Alzheimer’s.”
What, then?
Music. Play music. Although music is definitely an emotional trigger, it really tasks the brain on an intellectual level. It’s the math, really. Counting – mostly 1 to 4, but sometimes having to “Brubeck” or “DonEllis” all the way up to 9 or even 11 – is a real challenge, at least for my brain. At my age, it helps keep me on my toes because I can’t use my fingers to help me count. My fingers have to play the guitar, so I play barefoot and use my toes to hold my place in the counts. (I’m having an extra toe put on so I can count the DonEllis if we ever happen to play some.)
In addition to playing music I also like to read the dictionary. Just the words, though. Not the definitions. I don’t want to over-stimulate my brain.
There are three more Levels/Dimensions that somehow got added to the Big Four over the years: Social, Environmental, and Vocational. I’ll go with them for the purpose of this article, but I’ve always considered all of them to be basic necessities rather than Wellness Dimensions of the Human Condition. The main reason is, the original four can each affect the other. Emotional stress can affect the Physical. Spiritual can affect Emotional. Overthinking something intellectually (as I may now be doing) can affect the Spiritual. And so on.
But these Newbie Three seem to stay in their own lanes.
Nobody really needs Social as a Wellness Level. Somehow it got elevated beyond living with mutual respect in a civilized society. As Facebook, Xtwitter, Instagram, TikTok and others have proved, there is social, and there is anti-social.
That said, I try and be a good person to those I meet – online and In Real Life (IRL): Hold the door open for someone entering or leaving a store. Smile at a stranger, especially if (s)he’s walking a doggy. The car at the stop sign with the turn signal? Wave at them to go ahead of me. Pay the bill for the elderly woman at Save-A-Lot whose EBT card has run dry. (I can’t do that all the time. I’m not wealthy. But once in awhile is okay. Selfishly, it feeds my Emotional level and makes me feel good.)
Environmental is up next. Really? Isn’t it everyone’s duty to take care of the Earth as part of the Physical? That means keeping the place free of garbage, not cutting down trees to put up data centers, treating human waste before allowing it to flow into creeks and rivers, and a whole lot more that I’m too lazy to research and write about.
That last one before “and a whole lot more” requires a bit of explanation or justification: If I’m in the woods and I have to pee I just hide behind a tree. Unless there’s no one else around, in which case I don’t hide. I just make sure it doesn’t go directly into someone’s drinking water supply. I figure that millions of animals have been doing it for millennia, so emptying my bladder isn’t going to affect the Grand Scheme. Pooping on a hiking trail in the woods? Now that’s another story. At my age I’ve learned two things:
1. Never trust a fart to be just air.
2. If #1 above is not just air, blame the dog and keep walking. Even if you are wading in a stream.
The seventh Wellness Level is Vocational. Again, why does this need to be part of the Heptagon? Aside from the fact that it would no longer be a Heptagon (indeed, it would be a Hexagon), who needs it? Who needs to be told that having an occupation, a job, a career, a vocation – or other words from a thesaurus – will contribute to your personal wellness? When I didn’t enjoy what I was doing I changed direction and lifestyle to something I did enjoy. It happened five times in my life – so far – and only three of those times required starting over with zero net worth. As it turned out, happiness (part of the Emotional level) always prevailed over vocation when it came to my wellness. In short: Some people live to work; others work to live. I chose the latter.
So … How many levels are there? It started with the Triangle, then went to a Quadrilateral. Hoping for popularity – and, of course, social media clicks – some bandwagon-jumping, basement-dwelling wags unashamedly added their own levels to form a Pentagon, then a Hexagon, and finally a Heptagon.
In reality, you – and you alone – decide how many sides are on the polygon that comprises the Wellness Levels of Your Life.
It may be the Boomer in me, or maybe because it’s hip to be square: I choose the Quad.