What Is Well-Being? Part 2

Other avenues that distort our reality include alcohol, drugs or opioids, movies, books, newspapers TV, and The News. A study in 2008 by Bomlitz and Brezis looked at media reports and their health risks. Included in the list of health risk were such topics as SARS, AIDS, Cancer, West Nile Virus, Bioterrorism, Plane Crashes, Heart Disease, Car Crashes, Physical Inactivity, and Smoking. The researchers then correlated the number of media reports on a given health threat with the number of deaths in the US actually related to that threat. Their correlation was- 0.93. One conclusion taken was that our media in 2008 hyped a number of health evils beyond the actual death reality. It’s certainly difficult to remain happy watching or listening to so called news in our current culture with their fear driven messages. More recently, on a trail run with my friend Tony, we talked about our half marathon experience this past Father’s Day. I didn’t report, on a previous post, about the beginning or start of that run held in the Sierra- Nevada’s. From the start, we began our run with a significant grade of trail. I was quickly out of breath, thinking to myself, “this is going to be a long day and why is Tony still behind me? “ Tony told me that he too was quickly gasping for air and wondered about his ability to finish this event. I might add that there were many places that had snow covering our trail making running difficult. Did we require more challenges? I asked him if he experienced happiness at the beginning of our race; happiness during the race; or happiness at the end of the race. What most of us do is to rely on our thinking when talking about our feelings. I told him that was not going to do it. With thinking, we employ defense mechanisms such as rationalization, denial and isolation of affect, etc. We can logically convince ourselves of almost anything that we want. However, that doesn’t make it true. On other hand, feelings are fleeting emotions that we experience as physical sensations or discomforts found in various parts of our body, like in our chest, stomach, mouth, etc. that we can learn to identify. I must not have done a good job, as Tony didn’t get it. We laughed and acknowledged that we currently felt better in this moment than we did when we ran that half marathon since our bodies were not displaying significant discomfort at the moment. To Be Continued