What is a human being capable of? For example, how far can a person travel by foot in 24 hours? You might be surprised to hear that the records are 188 miles (!) for a man, Yiannis Kouros, and 155 miles (!) for a woman, Edit Berces. This works out to about a 7.6 minute mile and a 9.3 minute mile, respectively, mile after mile, for 24 hours. Six or seven marathons, one right after the other. When I heard this I was amazed. And although these are the world records, experts say that most able-bodied people are, with adequate training, capable of completing a marathon and much, much more. What are you capable of? The answer is, probably a lot more than you realize. And you can't know for sure unless you try. I'm not suggesting that you become an ultramarathoner (it's actually pretty rough on the body, as you might imagine). I'm just using this as one example of how a human being, and indeed every human being, is capable of incredible things.
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4 Comments:
I realize that this is not necessarily on point, but why is it that the media always play to the lowest common denominator in our society? I often wonder how knowing what Britney Spears is doing every minute of the day affects anyone else's life. The media concentrates only on what the tiniest percentage of people do. I understand that their mission is not to enrich our lves, but I find their approach pretty pathetic.
There are millions of people doing wonderful, but unnoticed, things all over the world, but they are generally not the ones we hear about. How many people know the names of the physicians and nurses who work with Doctors Without Borders? They make great sacrifices every day to help those truly in need, with very little recognition. Perhaps they have found the true meaning of "how to live" - helping to improve the lot of those who endure conditions far worse than those who merely "lead lives of quiet desperation."
Things that make me happy: my husband, my children, my daughter-in-law, my son-in-law, my fat contented cat, my friends, watching the wildlife in my backyard, sunny days, and a good book.
Things that make me sad: abuse of children, religious extremism and its associated violence, homelessness, and bad things happening to good people.
By gnt, at 9:52 AM
You're right that your comment isn't on topic for this post, but it's definitely on topic for this blog. I agree with your point that the media focuses far too much attention on celebrities and far too little on genuine heroes. However, I'd give only about 10% of the blame for this to the media themselves. The rest goes to the people who cause reporting on the minutia of celebrity lives to be so lucrative. You and I aren't interested in what Britney Spears had for breakfast today, but there are millions of people who are. (Why? Because evolution has encouraged us to pay close attention to whoever has what we want and to emulate them under the assumption that if we do what they do we're more likely to have the same successes. Why do most people want to emulate celebrities rather than people who give their lives in the service of others? Because (as a first approximation) fame was beneficial to reproductive fitness and sacrifice wasn't, and so evolution favored those who sought and achieved fame.) Anyway, thanks for the comments...
By howtolive.org, at 8:38 AM
Isn't this post (the original one) counter-intuitive to your post about not wanting to want to do things that your are incapable of doing? If humans are able to do amazing things, and often don't know what they are capable of, then by similar reasoning you should want to do everything because you are unable to know what you can and cannot do. How can you say what you can or cannot do(or determine what you do not want to do), since as you wrote in this post you have no idea what you are capable of?
By khtl, at 1:02 PM
khtl - Great point. I do think the two ideas can live together harmoniously in the same mind, although you're right that there is some necessary tradeoff. People need to aim for the right target, not so high that they fail but not so low that they know they can achieve it. So if they aim for the middle region, there will necessarily be some failures. But I think people are too risk-averse by nature (partially because people overestimate the extent to which might regret things they do and underestimate the extent to which they might regret things they don't do), and by encouraging them to aim a little higher I think it puts the target about in the right place.
By howtolive.org, at 8:33 AM
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