Is Your STOOL Holding You Up or Just a Pile of SH*T?

I’m not psychic or gifted.

I can never guess the surprise twist ending to a book … or movie … or TV show.

I was totally shocked by the bombshell ending of The Sixth Sense, the heartbreaking dilemma in Sophie’s Choice. 

All this is to say that I’m not perfect. I eat too much chocolate (WAIT! Can a person eat TOO much chocolate?). But you know that already.

I just have floating thoughts, like you, that buzz around inside my head and get released like doves or hot air balloons.

Some waft upwards gloriously, others fall flat and crash to the ground.

Some thoughts are like icebergs, rising unexpectedly from the watery depths, catching me totally off guard.

The thought running through my head today – like a song – is:

All you need in life are Love, Money and Health … these are the real clothes we wear … everything else is underwear and accessories …

MONEY. LOVE. HEALTH.

If anyone asks? … THIS is the true meaning of life … this is the core of our universe … all of the stars and planets emanate from this centre.

John and Paul sang: “All You Need is Love” … but, with all respect, they ran short with their song.

Think about it for a minute. How do you live your life?

MONEY.

Everything from the day you’re born directs you towards making a living i.e. money.

Our parents drag us from our warm beds in the morning and push us out the door with a little brown lunch bag or a DISNEY lunchbox.

We go to school for days, months and decades to learn how to earn a living.

We toil over dog-eared textbooks and Texas Instrument calculators and Erlenmeyer flasks for years and years – entering battles we sometimes win, sometimes lose –  so that we can contribute something to our world and to look after ourselves.

Of course not everyone squeezes out of their childhood cocoon into an adult butterfly with formal sit-down schooling … some choose the School of Hard Knocks and Life Experience.

We dream of becoming artists of life. Hopefully we create a moneyed canvas that brings challenges and joys as well as $$ to buy Apple iPhones and Samsung Big Screen TV’s, and Cabernet Sauvignon at our table.

Now we’ve reached the point where we pull ourselves from our own beds with positive purpose and expectations and $$-productive capacity.

Once we find our way in the working world … what comes next?

LOVE.

Many or most of us seek out someone we can send waves of nurturing and love, and feel the rippling tides of love in return – maybe I can touch your hand – and share our money with and buy houses and cars and take vacations and make babies. It’s primal this urge.

We visit bars, we lurk and snake our way through internet dating sites, we join gyms and churches and charitable groups.

Then, fortune on our side, one day after some very grubby mucky attempts, we find another seeker we can sit behind and wrap our arms around at the potter’s wheel.

We begin to turn the clay and hand-in-hand we sculpt something that resembles an internally satisfying life of fondness that’s beautiful and permanent, filled with good rollicking sex and patient understanding of our prickly bumps and quirks.

Our days can begin with a sweet halitosis shot laying next to us in the morning, and we awake with a smile.

HEALTH.

Underlying all of this love and money is the third peg to the stool.

By the way, a stool is a good analogy because we know the word has more than one meaning.

A stool can be a three (or four) legged seat that holds us aloft … or… a stool can also mean faeces, yup, SHIT!

Our optimal health is the stool that keeps us upright and shuffling forward day after day allowing us to find the money and love that we need to satisfy our humanity-bound Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

When our Stool of Health is unstable, missing a leg or perhaps wobbly on an uneven keel … our volatile lives fall to shit and nothing else seems to matter anymore.

Nothing remains balanced and afloat in the Sea of Tranquility if we’re too unhealthy or sick to enjoy the rest.

We need to look after ourselves.

Let’s live our lives with intent, not by accident.

Let’s eat the stuff that makes our bowels smile with delight. Let’s exercise enough so that our legs don’t take up half the airplane seat next to us. Let’s read good books and practice Sudoku and study Italian and laugh and giggle at the silly things we do.

It’s like I say. I’m not psychic or gifted. Sometimes I do think I see dead people.

I only want MONEY. LOVE. HEALTH. 

And chocolate … definitely CHOCOLATE.