Dorothy and Colin, you would have been proud of me. I am not sitting idle while I am on vacation. You are such wonderful role s for healthier living, being as you are so very fit at the age of 70 plus. Its because you are doing all the exercise and eating things that retired people should do, play tennis, golf, walk up and down hills, exercise and eat quality food.
I do not have your keen sense duty for doing all of what is healthy, but at least I recognize the need and have a willingness emerging from within my weak being. Staying healthy throughout one's entire life is quite a feat, but I suspect that most can achieve it with a little help and loads of common sense. Needless, to say, if you are healthy, you owe a lot to your parents. Indeed, parents, the greatest gift that you can give your children is a means of staying healthy, and it won't be by confabulating.
Common sense is all you need also to see that the volcanos of the Pacific Islands are telling us loud and clear that the earth is many billions of years old. I believe that the number is in the rocks of Greenland and South Africa that are over 3.4 billion years old. Humans have been around for a fraction of this time, if you think time exists as a flow of events and change resulting from processes. To say something is such and such an age is making all sorts of assumptions, but we are prepared to live within a range of error. To say that something did not exist when we have verification that it did, is, needless to say, potentially harmful and the grossest form of confabulation, people's imaginations running wild!
Its also very sensible to see forms of civilization as existing in full swing before the Egyptians decided to send Abraham's people on their way East. Putting a date on Biblical events is largely confabulation. How does all they all jive with the aging of the earth as put forward in the extreme interpretation of the Bible. Well anyone one with a little sense can see that they do not, if it is assume the time span of the earth is much shorted that it really is. Unfortunaely, much of the dating in the Bible does not really stand up to close scrutiny. What are we to make of that?
Well, nothing much. Its hardly surprising given that it is human nature to ability to confabulate. Confabulate? What's that? Well, put very simply, it is a revision of history by following our preferences and inclinations of what history actual was with what we think it should be or want it to be. It's very much like wishful day-dreaming about the past. We block out all the nasties, if we feel good about ourselves. Or, we can block out of the wonderful events, if we feel bad about ourselves. What we remember about history is thus very selective because of our wonderful abilities to confabulate. Everyone does it, without even realizing, we are doing it. Often the results are very harmful as they create barriers betwen people getting along rather than bridges.
In the short term, we can notice how children will confabulate about their parents, or parents about their children. Will the person who remembers the truth stand up. Oops, there is no one! No, there is no one who remembers the truth because the truth is confabulation. Thus, the Russian newspaper or the religions magazine that has as its mantra, the 'truth', don't really. They are confabulating the truth to suit their mood and the tone they want to set for their readers. Reality is that those that say they speak the truth probably confabulate the most. Hense, this is what you need to do.
If some one says they have or speeak the tructh, you need to verify that they have or speak the truth. Too many witnesses go before the juries of this world with confabulations of the truth which give very slanted views. To verify the truth seek it from as many sources as you can and take into consideration mood swings and that it is normal human behaviour to confabulating. Speak to your priest or minister and ask for the un-confabulted version of their doctrine and see or hear what you get as a response. Remember that monasteries will say one thing and the centralized priests will say another. For my money, I would go with those in the monasteries. They may be closer to earth!