Have you ever wondered what are the most important things in life? Truly important? Recently my daughter, who goes to primary school, had been complaining that there was too much learning at home and that she had too little time to play. I decided to make her realize what our life is all about, so I made a list that we discussed together.
The most important things in life:
1. Oxygen
2. Water
3. Food
4. Sleep
5. Hygiene
6. Clothing
7. Shelter
8. Bed
9. Bathroom
10. Work
11. Learning
12. Orderliness
13. Physical exercises
14. Mind exercises
The reasons for the list:
1. Several minutes without oxygen and you are dead.
2. Several days without water and you are dead.
3. Without food sooner or later you will be dead too.
4. The total lack of sleep will kill you too. Severe sleep deficiency is still very unhealthy.
5. Hygiene is very important for your health because it greatly lowers the risk of falling ill. Even animals care for themselves.
6. Clothing is needed in the vast majority of places – you can’t go naked through the streets, right?
7. Shelter is also needed in the vast majority of places. Even people living in a jungle (who wear hardly any clothes) built some kind of shelters.
8. Bed is a place where you can sleep. Sure that in extreme cases people can sleep on the floor/ground, but it's definitely worse than sleeping on a bed.
9. Bathroom is a place strongly connected with hygiene. Even people who don't have a separate bathroom in their own house need a place to wash themselves (not to mention a place to deal with their most natural needs).
10. All the previous things, except for oxygen, can be supplied to you by other people, for example by your parents (they actually HAD to be supplied to you when you were a little baby) or you can get them all by yourself. Either way it requires work (either your parents' work or your own work). Some of the material things you can make by yourself or you can buy them, but to have money you have to work too. Yes, you can inherit some money from your family, but the family had to work to get them, right? Life is all about work, like it or not.
11. Any work requires some kind of knowledge. Learning from other people, especially at schools, speeds up the learning process – the method of trial and error takes much more time.
12. Work and learning is definitely easier and quicker when you do it in an orderly way. Orderliness also helps to keep your place of living/working clean, which is good for your hygiene.
13. Physical exercises are needed for your body to develop properly and to stay that way as long as possible. They also help your mind because the whole body, including your brain is better oxygenated.
14. Mind exercises improve your learning, decision making and overall intelligence. Some logic algorithms developed by your brain during mind exercises are later used in whole different situations. Mind exercises based on memorizing things are especially good because the easier you memorize things the easier any learning process becomes. Also the more things you know the more efficient your work becomes. Obviously it is wrong to try to memorize everything, but in our complex world you need to remember many things anyway. The final reason is quite convincing – it has been proven that mind exercises can prevent or slow down Alzheimer's disease and other cases of dementia.
My daughter has agreed with my list, but she still complains that she has to little time for playing. Well, knowing something wise is one thing but acting accordingly to this knowledge is a whole different thing. Everybody has to come to final conclusions on his/her own. It comes mostly with age. Unfortunately some young people screw up their lives so much that it is all over for them before they mature.
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