Quality of life is such a personal concept. It is subjective, and quality-of-life changes throughout someone’s life, and it tends to mean different things depending on how old a person is.
One person’s highest quality of life may be one that is filled with reading books quietly in a garden, in good health, surrounded by interests and people who are family and dear friends.
Another person’s highest quality of life may entail becoming totally intoxicated by alcohol and drugs, going to nightclubs or rock concerts, sleeping between binges, constantly looking for the next distraction to avoid anything approaching boredom. Someone’s quality of life is the extent to which their life is comfortable or satisfying. It includes physical health, relationships and friendships, family, education and interests, employment and financial security, development of religious and spiritual beliefs, and it extends to national and global concerns such as political and environmental beliefs.
It is certainly true that people who lack physical health, or struggle with certain aspects of maintaining their body, can still have very high quality of life. This is because they have a certain level of personal comfort and satisfaction with their life, which they hold in higher esteem than their physical health. This is certainly possible, and good luck to you if you are one of these people.
At Nysteia, we simply submit that whatever your current quality of life, it will be vastly improved by optimising and enhancing your physical health.
When it comes to your life, essentially there are only two dimensions - you and the rest of creation.
You may have very little influence over the rest of creation. Rarely, if ever, does anyone or anything work out exactly according to your personal requirements. The world is not like that. People are not like that. It may be a source of great dissatisfaction or suffering to you that nothing works out exactly according to your personal requirements.
When it comes to your life, if you take command of it, then you have great influence over it. It is a conscious decision which you have to make. The vast majority of people live almost completely unconscious lives. They are completely trapped within their intellectual mind. A life designed by the intellectual mind will essentially have a certain quality, but not necessarily the highest quality.
Life itself, as a concept and as a reality, is infinitely and incomprehensibly vaster than your intellectual mind. Check: are you breathing, is your heart beating, is your blood flowing – were you consciously aware of these things whilst you are reading this? Probably not. The vast majority of your life is lived completely unconsciously.
The quality of your life is almost entirely up to you. You must live consciously and with awareness. We at Nysteia believe that the quality of life begins with physical health. When your body is maintained at its optimum, then your life has a foundation of excellence.