Greg Thrasher
BY GREG THRASHER, VOD CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
In the media and in various household venues across the nation the discussion about health care is a major topic. It is true that what we eat is critical to any health care discussion but not only is food and diet important but so are the items on the menu that we feed our minds. In urban venues and cities across the nation people are in a state of crisis and many communities like Detroit are on life support. We must then have a healthy state of mind to confront the foreclosures, school decay, crime, public corruption, high food, energy, and housing costs. Urban life in 2011 is under siege.
Family is vital to the Menu for Urban Life
Yet despite the forces of negativity and evil and duress the city can bring to our table we can overcome from using the talents from within ourselves. Our mental state of health is as critical as any diet. It is important that we feed our minds with good ideas, thoughts, logic, and content. One could argue that without a strong mental constitution being a super healthy person without an equally progressive state of mind is a waste of food and good health.
I don’t want toxic thoughts and negative knowledge inside my body. I am always rejecting hate, depression, evil and any negative ideas and thoughts from entering my body. When I eat I never read negative materials nor do I watch negative images on my TV or my computer screen while I am feeding my body. I monitor emails and I avoid downloading toxic and counterproductive materials from all sources including friends and associates.
Car pooling saves gas, makes friends
The Menu for Life for Living in Urban America includes the following:
1. Become SELFUS- Love Yourself and Others
2. Join a collective or support group of friends, associates in the city to create a critical mass to confront and solve problems
3. Share assets from car pooling to coupon sharing to old hearing aids, tv’s, coats.
4. Plan weekly roundtable meetings with family to discuss issues, challenges, positive events.
Detroit children help take care of neighborhood, 2009
5. Attend all public hearings, block club meetings.
6. Befriend a person of another race, nationality, ethnicity.
7. Walk the neighborhood, Have a shared location where conservation and discussions are welcomed and enriched with you and others
8. Create a personal diary, listen to music that uplifts, don’t digest food while taking about negativity and watching it on TV.
9. Volunteer, Mentor, Counsel and Listen.
10. Read Voice of Detroit.
Living a purposeful life in Urban America can be a wonderful life. Instead of battling the forces of despair and negativity one can become a vessel of positive resources. The menu of life in the city can be full of ingredients that inspire, empower and bring warmth and love into your apartment, shelter, office space . . .anywhere where you live. Instead of a currency of failure and hopelessness, we can live magnificent lives in the urban city.
The menu for life in Detroit can be as fulfilling as any place on the planet.
The mind must be allowed to have both negative and positive impulses, lest it will not be able to distinguish what is what. The mind must also be able to be used completely with both the right and left sides working together to figure things out.