The aim of this Post is to help identify and define for each of us what our own healthy Vital Opportunities are, and to a large extent, to have a better knowledge and understanding of them.
Vital Opportunities are a difficult subject to analyze as it involves the human attitude towards needs of all kinds. Each human group presents conceptual variations around its understanding, philosophical, anthropological, social, etc., however, we will approach them through the application of the WALK-RWD System and its fundamental activities, which will allow its adaptation and facilitate its understanding and use.
Let us briefly look at the anthropological philosophical thinking of human behavior in relation to the satisfaction of any need, in its surrounding reality.
“In ordinary experience we connect phenomena according to the category of causality or purpose. Depending on whether we are interested in the theoretical reasons or in the practical effects of things, we think of them as causes or as means. In this way we usually lose sight of their immediate appearance, until we can no longer see them face to face. […]. It is characteristic of man’s nature that he is not limited to one specific way of approaching reality but can choose his point of view and thus pass from one aspect of things to another”. E. Cassirer in Philosophical Anthropology, F.C.E., 1968, p. 251.
Space, time and number are continuous and infinite magnitudes, and are pure intuitions. Space and time provide the logical foundations for number, for mathematics. Only under the regulation of these three intuitions can the representation of the remaining things be realized, that is to say, by means of them and only by means of them can phenomena be produced in human consciousness. These three magnitudes permanently bind us to reason and do not allow us to meditate peacefully and undisturbedly on objects without their participation. Ernst Cassirer is quite solid and meaningful in his ideas when he asserts that existence – of any human condition, need or activity – is accessed through space, time and number. Each factor or entity that constructs itself independently achieves a hypostasis that structurally considers the principles and norms of a whole functional system in which it is immersed. All the images and impressions that the human being receives from the outside, he shapes and transforms into the kind of languages, which, voluntarily or not, consciously or unconsciously, he uses to understand, apprehend and process them in his personal inner source, and once translated, he communicates them to his outer circumstance.
The concept of Vital Opportunity is an ideal means of satisfying needs of a certain kind, as well as transforming unpleasant emotions, negative habits, sufferings, anxieties, distresses, misfortunes, sufferings, into pleasant, wholesome and healthy ways of feeling, perceiving and appreciating them.
Every Vital Opportunity that comes our way can help us to repair, understand and avoid those regrets and afflictions that we are constantly suffering and enduring, as well as give us an indulgence to our needs.
Every Vital Opportunity consists of these 3 pure intuitions, and therefore it is difficult not only to understand them, but how they can be identified (space and time) and quantified (number) for their utilization.
However, there is a great possibility to define, in each particular case, an identity between a negative feeling (need or suffering) and a vital opportunity.
The programme to carry out this identification of the great world of Vital Opportunities consists of 4 steps:
STEP 1. Get ready to walk;
STEP 2. Identify our needs and refuse to suffer or have any negative feelings.
STEP 3. Become aware and accept that we have certain needs and certain negative feelings, identifying them by name;
STEP 4. Match each unpleasant feeling and each need (or several) with a Vital Opportunity.
By achieving the first step, we will have advanced 50% of our commitment to move forward and “be able” to implement any Vital Opportunity, whether we seek it or it presents itself.
Let’s look at how we can take that first step. To do this we must understand the aspect of “power”; that capacity we have to achieve anything.
If we refuse to feel negatively, we will be opening the door to a possibility (juncture, circumstance, chance, eventuality, opportunity); we will be fighting against the conditioning of everyday life and social norms, we will be opposing all that we sense is negative within ourselves, we will be showing ourselves against that which has prevented us from achieving or attaining some vital opportunity, some level of pleasure and to live it to the full.
Before I go on to detail how to put vital opportunities into practice – to seek and find them – to reach a certain level of satisfaction and to eliminate our negative feelings, I will express a few words about the significance of Vital Opportunity.
SIGNIFICANCE.
Its understanding is linked in the answer to why I have used this concept to face the process of vital development of a person, at any moment of his existence. Concepts such as happiness, prosperity, success, fame, etc., are generally used and do not allow us to be fully aware of what they mean and how they are measured, except by the very parameters that the suffocating society embeds in us, and leads us through them all, without fully understanding them; and worst of all, without knowing how essential they are to the well-being and full development of our being.
According to the most common opinions, we are told that the vital opportunity must be understood as that circumstance which, within the existence of each individual, is a fundamental juncture to propel him/her in the social, working and creative environment, in some sense and to some degree, and which allows him/her to live (or survive) without asphyxiation and with full awareness of what he/she is and what he/she can become. Each vital opportunity is a possibility for personal development, through the use of one’s own physical and mental capacities, and with which to respond to our desires, expectations and commitments to ourselves. Let us keep in mind that this concept does not isolate us from the society that overwhelms us and that the opportunities themselves are, in part, defined and structured by it. They are all factors of change and improvement.
In our conception, vital opportunities are not only great, sporadic and opportune moments that we can seize, but, apart from their opportunity, which is fundamental, they are also small encounters, but above all, they present themselves continuously, i.e. daily, and therefore we must seize them daily, since all these opportunities lead us permanently to others.
With this expressive (verbal) binomial of “Opportunity” and “Vital” we refer to important moments in the life of an individual or community in which important and significant decisions can and must be taken that will affect their future and well-being.
However, there are other types of opportunities; as large a typology as required. They may be educational, professional, personal or economic, physical and mental health, and all offer the possibility of improving the quality of life and achieving personal goals and objectives.
Due to social conditioning, perhaps, the opportunities that we are most aware of and seek out are economic ones. Economic opportunities include times when decisions can be made that affect an individual’s (or community’s) financial and economic situation. Specific cases of economic life opportunities are:
– Acquiring vocational education and training: this can increase the chances of getting a well-paid and stable job.
– Starting a business or entrepreneurship: this offers the opportunity to generate income and build long-term wealth.
– Investing in the financial market: this can be a way to build wealth and protect against inflation.
– Buying property: can provide a long-term investment and a place to live.
– Saving money: can be a way to prepare for uncertain times and ensure long-term financial security.
These opportunities can have a significant impact on a person’s (or group of individuals’) financial life, so it is important to assess them carefully and make informed decisions.
The rest of the typology is very similar in format to the economic opportunities, so we will not spend more time describing them.
We can be sure that for each person, man or woman, over the course of a lifetime, there is a different set of vital opportunities, although the vast majority are repeated, but to a different degree and importance.
By definition, vital opportunities imply the quantity and supply – essential and sufficient – of satisfiers, so we should always take advantage of these moments and encounters in an optimal way.
Each individual must analyze and investigate in which personal circumstances he or she can increase the number of vital opportunities of which he or she can make use; but more decisive is that he or she can know the conditions in which he or she can identify and can put into practice one of them (a vital opportunity).
We can say that for each human being there is a special set of vital opportunities, and so we could ask: The greater the number of vital opportunities, the greater the number of satisfaction for each person? The answer is left to each person to structure according to his or her own circumstances.
CHARACTERISTICS OF VITAL OPPORTUNITIES
The main and common characteristics of vital opportunities are four: freedom, consciousness, will and change. All are structural and functional.
Vital opportunities, in general, are always involved in dissimilar circumstances and their occurrence depends on us and the external environment. We must eliminate chance, coincidence and eventuality from our circumstances. We must not let ourselves be carried away by “chance”. We will have to be more assertive and more timely in choosing a vital opportunity, because we have sought it out, and to put it into practice as a real handhold; the entrance to a portal where we can discover the solutions to our discomforts. I could say that we will have to act with precision and urgency; which will give us an additional advantage to find various answers that will make us more “aware” of those circumstances. Part of our analytical and decision-making position must be supported by a timely environment of speculation, sufficient reflection, which allows us to strongly probe our emotional, economic, physical and responsive positions. Anachronism must be eliminated, we will have acted in the “here and now”.
Freedom is generalized in all of them, it is immersed in each one, participating in a general as well as in a specific way.
Vital opportunities are just that, opportunities to satisfy pressing and basic human needs. If a vital opportunity is available, it must be made available.
In general, we can always identify some negative feelings or unpleasant emotions and relate them to the Forging Factors (FF) of the opportunities that human beings require for their survival and stable existence.
Without pretending to be exhaustive or definitive, the following table sets out the functional relationships between Negative Needs or Negative Feelings and the Forging Factors (FF) of human Opportunities.
The FF to be considered are elements that are used to determine the Human or Vital Opportunities, being these activities (actions, acts, practices) that human beings can carry out and that lead them towards the treatment and achievement (attainment) of these essential FF for their existence and survival.
Each individual must personally identify these functional relationships, through their own experience and knowledge, either because they have lived and felt them, or because they perceive and intuit them; that is, become fully aware that they exist within our being, and finally, achieve a functional correspondence of each unpleasant feeling or need – or several of them – with a human opportunity.
VITAL OPPORTUNITIES PROGRAMME (VOP) TO BE REALISED
Let us now look at the vital opportunities most related to our theme of walking, that is, those that are more related to our health and our state of mind. They are those that include key moments when decisions can be made that affect an individual’s physical and mental health and well-being.
I have been able to develop a functional and systematic scheme where we can make a Vital Opportunities Programme (VOP) that serves as a model of personal behavior, with the specific purpose of taking advantage of the 4 Vital Opportunities that I consider essential in human existence.
The mechanism to achieve the Vital Opportunities Programme, as I have called it, consists of practicing the 4 steps indicated at the beginning of the post, enabling and disposing of 4 vital opportunities.
This programme consists of projecting the Vital Opportunities of Bifurcation, Conscious Experience and Liberation, together with that of Walking. Starting with the first step, let’s analyze our negative feelings and emotions and look for the functional correspondence between these and Human Opportunities.
Some examples of health related opportunities include:
– Adopting a healthy lifestyle, by taking regular walks and including a balanced diet, which allows for stress reduction.
– Getting regular medical check-ups: to detect and treat health problems in a timely manner.
– Take preventive measures: such as getting vaccinated against diseases, avoiding smoking, alcohol and unprotected sun exposure – while walking – etc.
– Seek professional help: if mental health or emotional problems occur.
– Be informed about health: educating yourself about health and how to prevent problems can help you make informed decisions.
Decision-making within the Vital Opportunities Programme can have a significant impact on a person’s health and well-being, so it is important to consider them and make informed choices.
Now, within this Vital Opportunities framework that we need to look at, walking plays a major role. Let us take into account that walking is practically free in its development. Daily walking has an important relationship with the other three vital opportunities. Regular walking has a direct relationship with the Vital Opportunities because of its positive impacts on health, both physical and mental, in all individuals who do it. Some ways in which walking can influence Vital Opportunities include:
1. Improved health: walking can help prevent chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and heart disease, and a dozen other diseases, which we have already mentioned in previous posts.
2. Stress reduction: walking can be an effective way to reduce stress and improve mental well-being (Future Post THE WALK-RWD SYSTEM AND STRESS HORMONES).
3. Improved productivity: Walking can improve energy, concentration and decision-making ability. It increases productivity at work and in other activities (Posts EFFICIENCY AND PRODUCTIVITY IN OTHER FIELDS, THE SYSTEM CAN BE INCORPORATED TO COMPANIES).
4. Improved self-esteem: walking can increase confidence and self-esteem (Future Post SELF CONFIDENCE AND SELF-ESTEEM IN THE WALK-RWD SYSTEM).
5. Strengthening social relationships: Walking can be a social activity and help strengthen relationships.
Decisions that lead us vitally to walk put us in a positive perspective that puts us on the path to the rest of the other categories of opportunities. And, note that I have only pointed out 5 points where walking exerts a magical force to put us on the path of opportunity. That is, daily walking has – without a doubt – a positive impact on many areas of life, including health, productivity, social relationships and self-esteem, which in turn can influence Vital Opportunities and help improve quality of life.
Let us now look at what those Vital Opportunities are. They are not just circumstances by which we can or should act; they are not just (mere) occasions where our bodies and minds are engaged in acting for the achievement of different ends. These vital opportunities are handholds or supports that allow us to feel and function with a high probability of certainty – almost 100% – of favoring a state of personal satisfaction, with oneself, and with the people around us, as well as a very acceptable state of health.
One action -physical and mental- that we should carry out to start this Vital Opportunities Programme, is to move away for a while from social conditioning, and let’s observe which would be the essential opportunities that would not help everyone to reach an authentic personal development.
FIRST VITAL OPPORTUNITY: WALKING.
One of the main pressing needs we have is to walk; it is connected to a great number of other needs and organic functions (Post HARMONY OF THE BODY WITH THE MIND; BODY PARTS FOR WALKING-THEIR CARE; LISTENING TO OUR BODY WHILE WALKING), but above all with the other 3 vital opportunities. It is an activity that we can always do and that will help us to feel existentially liberated. (Post WALKING AND FREEDOM; Future Post WALKING AS A SYNONYM FOR FREEDOM). If we manage to set foot on a path, we can also achieve other goals through the integral application of the WALK-RWD system, when reading, writing or drawing, as we have mentioned in several posts (Posts WHY READ AND WHAT FOR?; WHY AND WHAT TO WRITE FOR?; READING-WRITING-DRAWING, VIRTUOUS CIRCLE; DRAWING, KNOW BETTER OURSELVES; DRAWING AND THRESHOLDISM, TO KNOW OUR INNER SELF; WHY AND WHAT TO DRAW FOR? THE GREAT BENEFITS WHILE WALKING.
SECOND VITAL OPPORTUNITY: BIFURCATION.
Bifurcation is in itself a privilege, a canon, not an obstacle. The existence of bifurcations in our lives is another of our vital opportunities (Post WALKING, AN EXISTENTIAL METAPHOR. PART 1 OF 4; future Post SARUTAHIKO, GOD OF TRAVELLERS IN ANCIENT JAPAN). To have and to use the bifurcations that present themselves to us, is to respond to our vital opportunities. To be presented with a bifurcation in our lives is to have new possibilities to make decisions and take actions.
This vital opportunity of the bifurcation is the one from which we will gain a more effective and transcendental liberation.
It is an attitude of alertness that we can realize in all our activities, reasoning out what the possibilities mean in our personal lives: They are options for moving forward.
THIRD VITAL OPPORTUNITY: THE CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE
This third Vital Opportunity is related to the acquisition of experience during the vital and opportune stages of any human being’s existence: during infancy, during childhood, puberty, adolescence, etc. As long as we are alive, we are on the move, we are walking.
By refraining from taking an action or a decision (2nd O.V. Bifurcation) we will continue to lengthen a process that leads us to continue experiencing unpleasant emotions, acquiring negative habits, suffering, anguish, distress, misfortune; however, as we know, we could come to determine an identity between an experience (positive or negative) and a correlation with a vital opportunity, so that we could transform those experiences into nourishing satisfiers. An experience – positive or negative – is the key that opens numerous doors that can lead to the satisfaction of needs and the alleviation of anxieties.
FOURTH VITAL OPPORTUNITY: LIBERATION
I prefer to call it Liberation rather than Freedom. The difference lies in the fact that Freedom is usually understood as something that is far away from us; very complicated, distant and difficult to reach.
Liberation is a word that is more accessible to me personally. I feel it will be available if I want it.
Let’s try to be more empathic, healthy, active, more positive, authentic, objective, and with that we will be liberated; we will feel freedom within ourselves, within our interiority. A simple and free practice is to walk. Let’s start walking and we can feel that we are freeing ourselves; moreover, when we read, write or draw, while we walk, this liberation is reinforced. This will allow us a greater capacity within ourselves to discover, select and reach the vital opportunities that our own being needs. We will become more aware of past experiences and the experiences we will have to have in the future. This must be a free decision and choice for ourselves. We will only have to seize that Vital Opportunity to WALK.
It is a matter of reciprocity. We feel healthy physically and mentally when we feel free, when we achieve that feeling of freedom in us, that we are not oppressed by anything. We feel good about what frees us.
What things free us? Walking frees us from oppression of ALL KINDS. It also liberates us to read, to write, to draw while we walk. Open space makes us feel liberation, freedom. We encounter open space; we encounter multi-colored wefts when we walk in the countryside; an encounter with that liberation. We will come to a collision with Freedom itself.
These activities that allow us to feel freedom are the ones that set us in motion, and with the movement we can feel our liberation and reach the other vital opportunities, to put them into practice.
ATTAINMENT OF VITAL OPPORTUNITIES
Freedom is a sine qua non-condition for the achievement of Vital Opportunities, so we must act in search of an existential metaphor to achieve, even if only for small periods, a specific physical, mental and spiritual liberation, and we are sure that by becoming aware of this resource, everything will become easier for us.
During our daily walk we can achieve this. This means that to the extent that we walk freely, becoming aware that we must rid ourselves of our negative feelings, we can move towards liberation from the social conditioning – of all kinds – that has prevented us from carrying out some fundamental activities, such as walking, and we miss some of the opportunities – in general – that are presented to us.
Social conditioning, usually translated into economic, social, professional, educational, political, urban and labor oppression, destroys the environment in which the opportunities that are available to each individual are developed, because they disorientate and blind us to them, we do not even observe them, let alone know that they can help us. These oppressions, in other words, create high contradictions in our minds (in the minds of individuals), which almost reach the level of being insurmountable.
The more individual freedom we feel and have, the more capacity we will grant ourselves to achieve certain Vital Opportunities.
The fundamental negative conditions are those we have with ourselves: guilt, fear, insecurity, frustration, pain, and a dozen other negative feelings that haunt our inner self, our intimate reality. Of course, we are also overwhelmed by economic deprivation, social deprivation, denial of success, lack of prestige, material emptiness. And of course, what commonly overwhelms the majority of the human race are physical and emotional ailments, but above all psychological ailments.
We will always have the choice to change and thus find liberation as we walk. This will lead us to mentally meet each of the Vital Opportunities we require.
Whenever we wish to put this programme into practice, let’s start by walking and then we can get to know our unpleasant feelings and negative emotions (ailments in general) and thus come to identify and qualify our own Vital Opportunities.
Final Note: With the publication of this Post we start the 6th consecutive year of the WALKREADANDWRITE Blog.