As I get older, more and more people around me get ill and die: many of them super healthy, not smoking or drinking, sporty all their lives, wealthy, health food nuts and no family histories get diagnosed with cancer and heart disease. In my group more healthy than unhealthy receive terrible outcomes at too young an age. It seems indeed it is not fair; do not believe or think it is, there is no reason to do so. Oh and another one is: you can have cancer and still get hit by a truck. Or; statistics don’t mean so much if it’s you ‘winning’ that lottery.
Life is inherently suffering and has no meaning. Being healthy brings many people joy and so does smoking cigarettes; either way we're here for a limited time surrounded by things that are trying to kill us so why not enjoy it?
That's my take at least. During winter I'd probably have a more depressing perspective but the sun has been out lately.
Not sure if you meant to say that, but I do believe you should do what you like and can in this short period on earth. Whatever that is and if it doesn’t hurt others, do it please, it doesn’t matter anyway.
However, almost all people I know that are over the top healthy (measuring everything, doing some sort of ‘du-jour’ diet (all meat, no meat, all protein, no protein, extreme fasting, no fasting; etc; ‘the best way to live’ changes more often than JavaScript frameworks), a lot of sports) are addicts to it or do it because they believe they will get a lot older than others (weird to me as many spend a of time doing stuff they don’t like; why would you want to lengthen your life in that case, but ok).
there's a workaholic / achievement / perfectionist satisfaction aspect at play - hustle to make yourself into an idealized version of self. Since achieving this is difficult, gradual, and ultimately impossible, it becomes a perpetual distraction.
I’d say existence precedes essence, and meaning is what the living do. If we make efforts to increase the footprint, robustness, and extent of life then we increase that meaning. (Existentialism, but more.)
The suffering depends on how lucky you are though; if you are well off (inherited or self made) and/or born in the right country you have the dope to not have the suffering. Eventually the dope to end it, whenever that may be. Meaningless cannot be helped; the universe is dark and vast and nothing ‘cares’ on any larger scale than your immediate family/friends, and even they lose interest, if they really had any to begin with.
I’m not sure about that. I think our baseline for suffering just shifts. So you can shield a person in a bubble of happiness, still some minor inconvenience might cause that person to break down if they’re not used to experiencing it.
The same way, people who have suffered a lot in the past might be now more happy than you are, maybe you’re objectively better but you might not perceive it that way, which is what matters in the end.
Another data point: We got a Peloton last year and have rode with lots of instructors. All of them are fit as hell. One of them had a stroke and another is battling breast cancer. Life waits for no one.
People who think that living healthy cosmically entitles them to live to the age of 85 without any unfortunate events are (cosmically) entitled. A sort of “I deserve better” attitude towards unhealthy people who happened to be more lucky reveals a nasty moralistic attitude.
Living healthy is extrinsically rewarding in itself. You better your odds at least. Maintaining this latent chip on your shoulders towards the unhealthy is weird.
EDIT: I wonder if there is a (channeling Nixon) silent majority of health-“nuts” who just live healthy without advertising it (beyond their inherent health and vitality!). We naturally mostly notice those who make it part of their persona.
> Maintaining this latent chip on your shoulders towards the unhealthy is weird.
I don’t do that : I just know a lot of extremes and it seems that it is moving toward that more but that might be my bubble. If you eat healthy, move, no smoking or drinking and don’t mention your marathons or weird diet every 5 minutes, it seems healthy to me, but people around me seem to not find that healthy since covid. It has to be more extreme, especially diet and especially the telling me how much they move per day as if it’s something to be proud of. So yes your EDIT exactly; their persona.
I don’t care if people are unhealthy or not and I don’t think it matters too much from personal experience; do what you like but don’t tell me about it. I live healthy but not extremely so that I have a diet or am so skinny that my wrists are the size of my calves (I have honest to god people who have that and say they are in superior health; smart people with doctorates too I might add); I don’t believe it but I definitely don’t care how much they bicycle, run, swim or whatever.
Yeah, important to realize healthy eating and exercise does something like reducing a 5% (say) chance of early severe sickness or death to a 2% chance. The exact numbers are definitely wrong but the size of the effect seems about right.
Of course, the chance of death is always 100% in the end :^)
