What can or can’t we live without? Do you ever sit listening to iTunes on your phone, watching Netflix on the computer, or just the latest episode of NCIS on your tv and think “How could I ever live without modern technology”? Well, I’ve got news for you. All across the world people did just that for centuries and still do in some parts.
But, apart from these things what intangible things can we dispense with and still survive as healthy human beings? For example,
- CAN WE LIVE WITHOUT FRIENDS
- WITHOUT SOMEONE YOU LOVE
- LIVE WITHOUT FEAR?
- CAN WE LIVE WITHOUT OUR ORGANS
Again, people sometimes have to do all these things but they are all contrary to natural human behaviour, and a healthy existence bereft of these things is very, very difficult.The fact is certain psychological conditions, psychiatric illnesses, personality types or behavioural traits leave some with a particular problem with these issues and sends them racing hotfoot to the door of the nearest therapist!
Much of our outlook on life stems from our upbringing. The socio economic standing of our family, our position in the family hierarchy, ie oldest, youngest, middle, child, our education. culture, religion, and not least our genetic make up, will all affect who we are but, is the pattern of our behaviour, our attitudes, and our opinion set in stone. I would say, categorically, No!!!!
So, lets start with the question of friends.Living without freinds
“Who needs a friend like you”, “With friends like you who needs enemies”, or an old English saying, “A friend in need is a pain in the ass!”, are all frequently used expressions in everyday life.
Although friendships can be an emotional support in life they can also be an emotional drain if you are focussing on particular targets like professional advancement or important learning targets and facing the kind of distractions emotional contact can bring you.
That is not to say your friendship is a bad thing, it might still be emotionally rewarding but friendship is a two way thing or it cant survive.
Emma Raducanu, the British girl who won the US Open Tennis Championship last year, has become the darling of the Press with her good looks and bubbly personality, not to mention her outstanding qualities on the Tennis Court, but you wont find any mention of a boyfriend in any publicity.
Can you really reach the top of your profession without total dedication and singlemindedness? I would suggest very rarely – if ever!
A person with a condition like Aspbergers Syndrome or Schizophrenia or even depression may naturally find their communication difficulties pre-empting any desire for friendship but, for good mental heath, friendship should be encouraged.
But, for goal driven individuals any social gap in their lives could adequately be filled by association with likeminded colleagues, or even rivals – with the added option of fostering good relations with those who may help in some way with the drive toward your goals.
This could be through mentoring, brain storming or just providing helpful contacts for example. If you really are going full out to reach a goal there may be limited time for much else in your life – perhaps not even love!
LIVING WITHOUT SOMEONE YOU LOVE
Just how do you manage this situation?
Here you are facing a huge dilemma as there is no satisfactory answer. Quite simply, you don’t ‘manage’ you just sit out the emotional pain until ‘time’ might provide the solution. But it doesn’t always.If the separation is permanent, as in the death of a husband or wife, or girlfriend/boyfriend, or child or parent, then the main course of action is to hope that memories may fade, a new found sense of motivation and purpose can dominate your thought life, or you can seek a replacement focus.
Reintroduce yourself to a social scene, make new friends, maybe find a new partner, in the case of a parent make sure you give extra focus to the surviving parent, if a child then increase the focus of your other children or look at the wider family with uncles aunts, nephews and nieces filling, to a lesser extent, the gaps left by those you have lost.
But, remember, this will not be a speedy process. It has been suggested that a bereavement or a break up of a long term relationship can take two years to resolve.
If the separation is temporary it can be less traumatic. In today’s world ,social media can ensure some communication is maintained while those love substitutes mentioned earlier can again be called upon to ease the heartache of separation.
Now, heartache is one thing but what about coping with the troubled world in which we live. Our world appears to have trouble around every corner. With High School shootings, terrorist bombings, racial tension, religious conflicts it is reasonable to ask, How do we live without fear?
LIVING WITHOUT FEAR
Because fear is a powerful emotion it needs
a) a powerful emotion to negate it or
b) have a very strong set of emotional/psychological strategies in place to obviate specific fears.
However, we must recognise that fear is a legitimate emotion in certain circumstances and we should make sure we distinguish between this kind of fear and the kind of anxiety we sometimes refer to as fear, or the fear we may say we have of ‘heights’, ‘spiders’, ‘closed spaces’ etc which, more precisely, are phobias.
Let me go through these classifications of ‘fears’ one at a time.
Firstly, those caught in life threatening situations they can do nothing about, like a terrorist attack or an earthquake, or rail or road bridge collapse, would be very strange people if they did not experience some kind of fear. Some philosophies, religious or otherwise, enable the human brain to train itself to calmly accept inevitabilities but, arguably, their followers are in the minority.
Phobias can be addressed through various psychological interventions like Hypnotherapy, C.B.T. (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy), Mind Coaching, or Positive Psychology but what about the everyday fears that are embraced by the ‘anxiety’ spectrum.
Now, if the degree of anxiety is severe enough to disrupt someone’s life, to the point they are struggling to function adequately in society, then professional clinical help is needed with medication and/or the therapies previously mentioned but if we take Webster’s very basic definition of being worried about what might happen then there are some simple things we can all do for ourselves.
If we approach the issue of ‘what might happen’ in a calm and logical frame of mind we can began to lose the fear
by planning for possible outcomes and formulating solutions.
Explore the worse case scenarios and then work back to prevent the development of that situation.
Who has faced the threat of legal action for late payment of an invoice for something like their domestic fuel or rent. I once had a letter saying ‘pay in 14 days or else! After an initial panic I rang the electric company and asked what the ‘;else’ entailed. When they told me that non payment would involve a further demand, then there would be an application to the courts, and then there would be a court date set, and then I would have to attend a hearing where a judgement would be made against me, it became apparent that any legal judgement would be about 3 or 4 months away. So I calmly planned accordingly.
The anxiety is in the uncertainty. So, arming yourself with full knowledge of a situation is a major factor in living without the fear of a situation.
Take the common fear/anxiety of failing exams. I faced this on one occasion after a 12 month course to add to the professional qualification I already had. After a brief moment of anxiety I reasoned that the three years training and five years of practical experience I already had should be enough to match anyone preparing to face their first examination in a similar field of practice.
Looking into it further I assessed the consequences of failing and concluded that, if things didn’t work out, I could always re-sit the exam at a later date. Once again it was knowledge that allayed the anxiety.
Always take the time to step outside the situation and, to reiterate, look at the possible scenarios, and make your plans calmly and logically to deal with each one. Remember that fear or anxiety is a result of uncertainty of an outcome so have your plans ready for whatever the outcome.
CAN WE LIVE WITHOUT OUR ORGANS
The human body is a complex machine. It has many organs and systems working together to keep you alive and healthy. But what if some of these organs were taken away? What would happen if you lost your liver, kidney, or heart?
Primary reproductive organs perform many actions like the healing process, normal diet, immune function, and controlling excess cholesterol. Other organs like recycling red blood cells, menstrual cycle, lose large chunks, digesting soft foods are also carried out by different organs.
In simple words, even though some organs have only one functioning like red blood cells helps the body quickly replaces tissue paper like capsule. Recycling red blood cells may result in the reduced life of other organs.
What are the seven body organs you can live without?
The human body has many vital organs that work together to keep it functioning properly. These vital organs are important for survival and need to be taken care of, but there are some that we don’t need to worry about as much as others as they non vital organs . There are several other organs we can survive without too , people can live relatively normal lives a list of the seven body organs you can live without:
- -The kidney
- -Bladder
- -Stomach
- -Appendix
- -Spleen
- -Gall bladder
- -Thymus gland
1. The kidney
The kidneys are two bean-shaped organs that are located on either side of the backbone, just below the rib cage.We all need to drink water to stay healthy. The kidneys are the organs that keep the balance of water and electrolyte balance in our body. One of their primary functions is to filter out waste products such as urea and creatinine from the blood and excrete them in urine.
If the kidneys stop functioning properly, we can be at risk for health problems such as dehydration, high blood pressure, or kidney failure. For people with kidney disease, these problems may occur more quickly because they don’t produce urine like a healthy person would.Kidneys can be removed, but you won’t be able to live without them. The kidneys are responsible for filtering blood and producing urine, which means that if the kidneys fail , your body will not be able to function properly.If a person is placed on dialysis, their life expectancy depends on many things, including the type of dialysis, sex, other diseases the person may have and their age.
2. The bladder
Bladder disease is a disease that affects the bladder. The bladder is a hollow organ that stores urine, which is made in the kidneys and stored until it leaves the body.
The urinary tract infection is an infection of the urinary tract. It can affect any part of this system, including the urethra, bladder, ureters, kidneys or prostate gland.
3. The stomach
The stomach is a muscular organ of the digestive system. It is located in the upper abdomen, below the liver and above the intestines. The stomach performs for main main function :mechanical digestion by contracting to smash up food, chemical digestion by releasing acid to help chemically break up food, and then absorption and secretion.When the stomach is removed, surgeons attach the oesophagus (gullet) directly to the small intestines.
4.The appendix
The appendix is a small, tube-shaped organ that is attached to the large intestine. The appendix has no known function in humans.
It can be removed without any negative effect on the body and its removal reduces the risk of appendicitis, which can be fatal if left untreated.There are some cases where the stump of the appendix might not be fully removed, and this can become inflamed again, causing ” stumpitis “. People who have had their appendix removed notice no difference to their life.
5. The spleen
The spleen is an organ that helps your blood clot properly.This organ sits on the left side of the abdomen, towards the back under the ribs. It is most commonly removed as a result of injury.It also filters out old and damaged red blood cells and removes them from the bloodstream.
6.The gallbladder
The gallbladder sits under the liver and is responsible for storing bile.
The gallbladder is called bile, and it helps to break down fats in the stomach. The organ sits under the liver and is responsible for storing bile. When you eat, your stomach sends a signal to forcing bile into the small intestine where it helps to break down fats.
Gallstones are also surgically removed when cholesterol in bile can form gallstones, which can block the tiny pipes that move bile around. When this happens, people may need their gallbladder removed The main function of the gallbladder is to store and release bile. It also helps control blood sugar levels by releasing bile when we eat high-sugar foods like candy or cookies, which can cause blood sugar levels to rise rapidly.
7.The small intestine
The small intestine is a long, thin tube that takes up most of the space in the abdominal cavity. It is about 20 feet long and 3 inches wide. The small intestine has three sections: the duodenum, the jejunum, and the ileum.
Well, I have looked at how to deal with life without certain things but it is perhaps time to turn the question on its head and ask ‘What can’t we do without in life?’
WHAT CAN’T WE DO WITHOUT
There is one very good place to start answering this question and that is to look at our human rights as we all need them. ‘Human Rights’ are ‘The inalienable, fundamental rights ” to which a person is inherently entitled because he or she is a human being” and which are “inherent in all human beings”, regardless of their age, ethnic origin, location, language, religion, ethnicity or any other status. They are applicable everywhere and at every time in the sense of being universal, and they are egalitarian in the sense of being the same for everyone.
Now that is a bit of a mouthful but basically it is saying
- Our basic human rights, as outlined below , are things we cannot live meaningfully without.
- We cannot live without food and water
- We cannot live without air.
As for material things, basically, the term ‘I just cant live without my…….’ is largely superfluous. Unless we are talking about ‘medical issues’, like medication for a disease, lung and kidney transplants, pacemakers etc the fact is we can probably live perfectly well without the things we often regard as essential in our ‘First World’ existence.
It is time to be more fully aware of ourselves and of those around us.
Conclusion
There are some social needs and some biological needs that every human being has. All reproductive organs have specific functions like intestines detect fats, some methods draw waste, some control bowel habits and some digest fat.
It does not matter if it is about social or biological needs, there are certain things that guarantee our survival. Still, most of the things in life can be removed to make your life more peaceful.
