To this day, I still hear the term “Life Expert” dropped all over the place. Them. They continue to seem well versed in all kinds of principles inapplicable to our lives. They must be doing their job.
Their suggestions and implorations certainly aren’t bad ones. How comfortable would you be at one of these “Life Seminars” if a high-paid byline health-&-lifestyle expert stepped up to the podium and advocated for staying up late, pastrami sandwiches at 3am and OTC pain relievers every day..? That probably wouldn’t go over too well at one of those Wellness Festival agendas.
The reason however that such festivals, seminars and symposiums continue to commence at high admission price quite so successfully is that our U.S. world is populated generally by a people under the influence of stress factors that drive them into the more convenient and generally poisonous lifestyle habits that make these divine life-enchanting retreats quite so seductive for a day or maybe an hour or two. If you can’t necessarily live it or live by it, just hearing about it for an hour might make you feel a little better, or at least a little more virtuous.
Not a single one of these outspoken experts, big or small, will actually in their own words articulate the concrete fact that for many, the kinds of daily life practices they espouse are just plain unattainable. It sure would be phenomenal if we could all arbitrarily upright our lives in such way that we could eat no more after 6pm, get into bed at 9:55pm, sleep restfully until 6am, and rise fully rested and energetic to begin a brand new sunlit day. At the threshold of middle age, as a functioning, well-ordered creature of modern society, I have in my life yet to meet and know anyone who has thus far in their life attained this daily cycle.
Bottom line is, I therefore remain incapable of fully believing anyone who insists that they have. I’m not attacking their character. They might be fine human beings. Look, we all have to live some kind of lie in order to survive. The idea is that you just shouldn’t be hurting anyone in the process of doing so.
These Health-&-Lifestyle experts that make their living more or less by stepping out and reminding us to shut off the electronics and shut our eyes by 10pm, shut our mouths and our fridge by 6pm, and wake at 6AM must all be living together permanently in some kind of encampment. I wouldn’t mind joining them sometimes. Apparently others wouldn’t either, because that’s how these vacation retreats are organized, for sky-high prices. People whose lives and careers force them into late-night, sleepless and poorly-fed life cycles will pour their annually-saved five-figure vacation fund into a four-day, three night dreamscape at some Southwestern compound, an exquisite ranch setting with superb lavender-scented, organic-cotton-sheeted accommodations, for four days of quiet meditation, gazing, prayer that apparently can only commence in such setting, and a culinary departure from anything gluten or processed, strictly organic and plant-based. How good would a microwaved burrito from 7-Eleven taste in an atmosphere like this..? Certainly not at these prices.
When you listen to some of these high-atop-the-mountain practitioners with their divine halo preach their desperate plea that we all must shut off the smart phones, ditch the carbohydrates, the dairy, the gluten, the processed products, the plastic, the additives, the chemicals, the LED lights, the electronics, and basically each and every component of that which feeds our lives, our livelihood, our rent and the roofs over our heads, it’s not hard to lose respect for them at an accelerating rate. The only next unavoidable step is the discovery that they themselves are not immune to these forces in their intimate lives.
Many of them of course would not, to look at them, appear to be so adversely affected by the poisons that wear down us pedestrian humans so destructively. They seem to visibly have the gift of eternal youth and energy. I didn’t have the kind of youth, health and physique some of these middle-agers have when I was fifteen in the 1980s. Though I’m fortunate to have achieved just a smidge of better physiology now with more mindful practices, the secret of these Health Industry Rock Stars remains a dark-crystal mystery.
Far as I can tell, these celebrities, authors, speakers, TV-talking-head figures all need to co-exist on the same planet that we do. When we all had to mask up for COVID, so did they. How are they so immune to the life traps that force all us minions into such poisonous lives that send us into the holy submission of high-priced health-lecture weekends over which they proudly preside..?
Perhaps one very relevant question that might generate in our entrepreneur-startup culture is, “Why can’t I become one of them..?” “What do I need to learn in order to attain their expertise..?”
The messages these experts seem to collectively espouse tends to gravitate to the same basic tenets: No intake of products artificial. Organic, natural food at all times. Alkaline water as beverage at all times. (None of that tap stuff..) In bed and lights out by 9:59pm. Sleep in place until 6:00am, thoroughly rested, energized and ready to embrace a glorious new day along with the rising sun. Every single day of your life.
That doesn’t really seem too intensely complex to embrace or articulate to others. A retreat weekend or two of this stuff and you could probably figure out how to write your own book, set up your own lecture tour, and become your own outspoken, reformed life expert. If you live by The Rules.
A friend of mine in the PR business had an encounter, actually more than one over time, with a few of these touring Health and Better Life Experts. One of them was a woman of forty who kept herself looking twenty with the use of an endless cocktail of skin and hair products, along with the threatened practice of indefinite fasting. Except for black coffee, and plenty of it. It was a speaking and TV-tour. No one asked her what resided in those little prescription vials in the quaint purse that would not at any time leave her side, but despite it’s apparent presence, no one wanted to. The fact that this woman was doing all this to fulfill the wellness dreams and hopes of so many was validation enough. The friend in question was of course prohibited from disclosing any identities, but was not beyond covertly sharing the fact that this type of noted profile was not limited to just one figure of the sort. Actually, she admitted with trusted candor, it typified all of them.
Yes, it’s quite ugly of this author to break such a trusted confidence, but you see, I’m something of a health and lifestyle coach myself. I’m not one to preach arbitrary structures unattainable in the functional world in which we need to exist, but I am one to acknowledge the fact that it’s wonderful to be able to live with freedom, in a world that permits us to make our own choices, correct them at will when we can, enjoy the dreamability of the life scenarios espoused by these fantasy health-makers, and try and get some rest after we get home from work at 1:30am, eat our take-out supper, watch some True Blood on Netflix and roll into bed at 4:30am for two or three hours, until we have to wake up to go to work. The gurus have their job. We have ours. If anything, ours are easier. We're allowed to be who we are.
