Death by a thousand cuts
We are dying by 1,000 cuts, and we don’t know it.
Lingchi is an ancient Chinese form of torture. When I say old, it was only banned in China in 1905. Lingchi roughly translates to ‘Death by 1,000 cuts’ whereby the perpetrator is bound and drugged in a public square and bled slowly to death, one cut at a time.
A little nick here, a slight scratch there.
Not much at first – incisions into the skin and muscles, followed by the joints. Hour after hour, the prisoner is sliced a little more until, eventually, he dies by 1,000 cuts.
Not a pretty picture, is it?
And yet I see people doing it to themselves, day in and day out. Ok, we aren’t slicing ourselves with a knife, but we are killing ourselves little by little. Think about all the choices we make, every day, which are killing us slowly.
Here’s a few for you in case you’re struggling to identify them:
Jobs we don’t like
Relationships we hate
No passions in our life
Mouth breathing
Poor food choices
Sedentary lifestyles,
Living indoors more of our life.
....the list goes on.
We are literally suffering the same barbaric fate Chinese prisoners faced in the Ling Chi. At least the prisoners had the act done to them. We are doing it ourselves. What’s more, is we are also drugging ourselves so that we can withstand all the pain of a life unfulfilled.
Our drugs of choice are:
Accumulation of things we don’t need or want
Alcohol
Meaningless Sex
Food
TV, magazines, social media and mindless surfing of the net.
Cigarettes
Harder core drugs
Look at each of them carefully, then look to your own life. Can you see them there? In and of themselves, most of these habits won’t kill you. But if you allow any one of them to get out of control or, even worse, if you build one practice on top of another, then you are effectively torturing your own body over a long period.
Sleepless nights, fatigue and ‘getting through the day’ are not healthy ways of life for humans.
Coffee, sugar (in all its forms) alcohol, cigarettes and drugs are not required to keep us going.
Low energy, pain and disease are not things we should be living with daily.
The Human Being is born to do more than just survive, we are born to thrive. Breathing, movement, natural food and play is what we need to thrive as Humans. Love, faith, hope, passion, community, forgiveness and thanksgiving are requirements as whole Beings. All of these lifestyle practices together foster a fulfilled life. They are your superpower. Together, they unleash the influential person you were born to become. They develop your Innate Strength.
So, instead of torturing yourself slowly over a lifetime, you can choose to live a Strong life inside and out..
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