As covid mutates into Alpha and Delta, and the next variant starts to evolve in Indonesia, we have, before our eyes, an Olympic Games of the most competitive reflection, life itself.

Naively we turn to medications that remain focussed on solving the first variant, and, in America, they now speak of three or even four shots of the original vaccine to fight the latest variant.

Before you get mystified by my comments, I am an advocate of getting the “jab” in spite of my needle phobia. So that’s not the point. The point is this: your life depends on you evolving, and it’s not just about gold medals, it’s about remaining relevant.

Parenting, the parenting I witness through social media and first hand observation in BONDI is a great example of a solution that has not adapted, in most households, to the new variant of virus called life of a future adult in most homes.

Question a parent’s parenting and you will get violence, at least a violent reaction. We are very, very attached to how we parent. Everybody thinks their watch tells the right time. And we all know, deep down, we are just doing our best, faking it, hoping to make it.

The problem is that nothing stays as we know it. Can you imagine the technology that could allow a 12th year student to do their final exams online without a mentor or coach guiding them to victory in the background?

My old iPad, doesn’t work anymore because I upgraded the software but the hardware is too old to take it. That’s called stress, lost direction, depression, fatigue, overwhelm in a human life and, if something doesn’t change, the virus called life, will cause that life to be recycled.

Nature destroys anything that does not fulfill its purpose, and, generically spoken, your purpose is to evolve at or faster than the virus called life, technologically, scientifically, and especially socially growing exponentially, leaving most people to rely on a “jab” for flu, “jab” to poo, acupuncture, acupressure, Physio, blood pressure pills and IVF for fertility. We must be able to accept, most people are not keeping pace with the evolution of the virus called life. Especially at work but more conspicuously at home in family and parenting.

Darwinian theory detects the process of evolution as the single and only constant in an emotionally driven world as “survival of the fittest” and in Tokyo, that’s transparent. But, outside that clean competition for best, most evolved, the subject becomes more complex and confused. Everybody thinks their watch tells the right time because not everybody is looking to evolve.

To continue the example, let’s use the Olympics. This year they include surfing, skateboarding, bmx, rock climbing and other newish sports in order to evolve the games and make them relevant. While the also keep tradition with shot put and lawn bowls, they recognise who the audience will be in 4-10 years. If you go back just 30 years, adding a new event to the Olympics would have caused a real trauma, this time we just embrace it. Change, at the Olympics, is ok because we were getting bored and now our app lets us switch to our choice, the change doesn’t matter, it’s not dominating our screen. We can stay stuck in the past, while the Olympics evolves into the future – technology gives us the ability to ignore change and stay stuck in our reality, a memory of the past, how it used to be.

But we demand performance. If our athletes do bad, we are disappointed. If they take drugs we jail then. We demand evolution from others, products, computers, medicines, while we remain blocked, locked into our view of how things used to be, or should be.

Every time we do this we become, in Darwinian language, less fit, less likely to survive, less joyful, less filled with faith, less able to live in a broader sense and more locked into being a good parent in a small sense of trying to control something that, for a time, we can violently dominate using authority and dependency as weapons. It is a desperate call for help the day we become proud of our parenting but ashamed of our living or working modality. This is the opposite of evolution, it’s a virus and those who will catch it are our children, and theirs, and those we collude with to validate our pride in our parenting.

The misadventure is costly. Mental health, physical health, and spiritual health are being replaced by collaborative ignorance. We seek and find what we want to hear to prevent our own evolution rather than engage it through confronting what we know.

Teachings are made to be stepped on, not stopped on. Each learning is temporary, perfect for a moment in time, temporary in context of a rapidly evolving world. But we learn, stop, hold, grip and fight for that knowledge even if it was the impression of our experience as a child or a reaction to a circumstance we have wrongly blamed a bad childhood period for. It ultimately takes us, and our proud parental righteousness to the grave, and kids we infected, with us.

The challenge of evolving is the multidimensional nature of it. In short:

• 1. There are seven areas of life and comfort will kill you. But satisfaction is essential….
• 2. Mind, Body, Environment, Values, Vision, Faith, all must grow for evolution to stick
• There needs to be a target greater than self (self includes family, children) – a purpose to life bigger than self, to evolve.
• The universe cares about your tiny little morsel of cellular existence enough to encourage you through, calamity, disaster or humbling circumstances to either use it, or lose it. In other words, evolve it or dissolve it (it being your life)
• Pride in parenting is not a Prozac for life. It’s a virus that has no “jab” to fix.

Live with Spirit

Chris

Ps the next time you ask how do I be a better version of me or lack the will to evolve and discipline your life please remember this cartoon.