Coming into 2024 this year, I found myself considering what really matters. What matters to me, and what matters on a more global scale. The usual things came up … staying healthy and well, keeping in regular touch with friends, family and community, developing new relationships, exploring new business opportunities, and of course money, because we can’t do anything unless we have money can we? Even though .. I love exploring ways to live with little money, because most of us are living the same paradigm … grow up (well I’d question that as some never do), get with a long term partner, buy a house, have children, work hard, then retire and travel round Australia – sound familiar?
What is wonderful about the mixed up, shook up, world we are living in today, right now, is we are all being shaken up – whether we like it or not – and I don’t think anyone is escaping having to look at their life a little differently. Uncertainty doesn’t always have to be a scary thing though. Because if you really open up that concept and look at it, each day we wake up we really don’t know what is going to happen. That is reality. So then it just becomes how we approach that day, and how we handle or manage the things that inevitably come to us, and being conscious and aware of that.
So with that thinking in mind and heading into the start of 2024, there are three words that have come up for me: focus, collaboration and power. I am still pondering, meditating and considering the full meaning of these words, and what they mean for myself personally and The Art of Healing. However with regard to collaboration, I have spent many years holding The Art of Healing close, and loving the independence and growth it encapsulates. But I just think now more than ever before, we just have to come together and work together for the greater good. We all know there are so many things that need changing, particularly systemically, and that this is why so many are struggling with mental health issues. It is simply because it is difficult – for some well nigh impossible (eg. housing and renters here) to live within the parameters of what has been created. So many people are just falling through the cracks now. So I just think we all need to get out from behind our computers and rally together on some of these key issues that are effecting the societies in which we live so enormously. And we can’t instigate the big changes that are going to be required, if we are all individually trying to do this. The power will come and needs to come from all of us uniting together. So if this resonates with you, please don’t feel shy in contacting me. I would love to connect with you.
With regard to health and wellness, there is a lot of bad news I think in this issue .. I have deliberately included the stats on obesity below this note as an example of where we have come to – after so many years of research and knowing that we need to eat better and regularly exercise. In my life when I am ‘out and about’ I just find a lot of people don’t seem to want to know about good health or self-development. I still find this astonishing. I think most people don’t really think anything bad will ever happen to them. So we are so very lucky in this country to have such an accessible health system that helps so many. But as long as I am alive, I will keep banging the drum, that if you look after your health well, if you consistently check in with yourself on the physical (nutrition + movement), mental, emotional, social, spiritual and environmental levels to see how you are tracking, the longer you will be able to stay away from needing institutional healthcare. Our bodies and minds are so good at looking after themselves, including healing where necessary, if we pay attention and provide ourselves a good, strong and healthy environment. I know so many of you already ‘get this’, so now all we need to do is convince others, and within the pages of this magazine I hope you find lots material to fuel your fire.
CATE MERCER
Editor/Publisher
The Art of Healing
This Editor’s Note appeared in Vol 1 Issue 86 of The Art of Healing.
