What If ...

What if eating red meat and saturated fat was thought of as healthy by most people?

What if eating grains, seed oils and lots of sugar was thought to be unhealthy?

What if grocery stores stocked far fewer pre packaged, fake foods solely designed for palatibility and shelf life ? (Looking at you Hostess)

What if we instead shopped at small mom and pop stores that carried seasonal, locally produced goods and items?

What if the Government didn't subsidize Big Agriculture, artificially keeping the price of grains and sugar low?  And they consequently got out of the business of telling us what constitutes a healthy diet (food plate, pyramid, what have you).

What if people didn't watch so much television and spend so much time on computers and smart phones?

What if we instead spent more time with our families, our neighbors, our friends - and we became more involved with our community?

What if we concentrated on ensuring that everybody had access to quality food and had a roof over their head?

What if more than 10% of the health care budget was spent on prevention?

Hmmmm ...What If ?

What if we swapped the budgets for Education and Defense?

What if the standard 40 hour work week was scaled back so people had more time to invest in some of these ideas?

Would we then become France?

Seriously though, I could go on and on with the What if's here.  We sure do face a lot of obstacles in our society today, our whole World even.  Way more than any one person could not only hope to solve, but perhaps could even contemplate.  Kind of mind numbing actually.  So does that mean we should forget about it all and just carry on our merry little way?  I don't think so.

I have an idea.  Recall my post on Master the Moment?  That was about exploring the art of focus during intense exercise.  Let's take this focus and begin to apply it in our everyday actions.  In our actions with our families.  In our actions with others in our community.  In our actions at work.  The more focused we are, the more engaged we become.  The more engaged we become, the better we are at making decisions to benefit ourselves and our society.

Unfortunately, like the mindless wandering that occurs daily on elliptical machines and treadmills throughout the World, non-engagement happens all to often.  We merely go through the motions of our jobs, of talking to people, of shopping for groceries.  We go through the motions, but we are not engaged.  We have become Zombies with short attention spans.

Fortunately, each of us has an amazing piece of gray matter between our ears.  Let's use it a wee bit more often and see if we can make this World a better place to live ... one focused moment at a time.