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The world works as large scale
system of problems and issues that humans try to overcome on a
daily basis. We create to circumvent these global issues, but
in the end we all experience suffering, the same as we
experience joy.
Some of us learn to build on our
suffering while others are dragged deeper into it. The ones
who build on it are the ones who have learned something, and
the ones who suffer more, learn more. Often the ones who
suffer the most are the ones who make the biggest changes as
they are able to channel their suffering into a powerful
motivational catalyst which they use to making the world a
better place for all who live in it.
These people are inspirational
through quiet unnoticed acts of kindness, or can be publicly
known for their large scale contributions that have affected
volumes and masses of human individuals. Either one is a
person who has suffered themselves and has been moved so much
that they cannot stand idly by and watch others experience
what they have seen or experienced in the past.
There is a fundamental base of
needs that every one of us requires fulfilled in order to live
at a basic state of cohesiveness, awareness, and in order to
function as a human. These include many simple things like
water, food and shelter, simple because society has made it
easier to attain them. There are more complex things we don’t
all find so easily, but it is harder to detect who hasn’t
found those needs, things like love, friendship,
companionship, or even a general sense of peace of mind.
We want to help these people who
are looking for the more difficult yet still fundamental needs
that all humans must have to survive. The greatest and
strongest people are the ones who do not participate in the
corporate-stimulated societies of isolation. These are the
people who will talk to each other while standing in a line-up
or at a bus stop. These are the people who will sit next to
someone alone at a coffee shop and carry on a casual
conversation. These people are also quite often the ones we
count on to come to us when we are on the receiving end of the
lifeline of social interaction and mental health and
wellbeing. These people also don’t recognize words such as
‘stranger.’
The problem in our world is that
those people, whose physical needs of water, food, and shelter
are met, do not have many of the social needs of
companionship, love and friendship while those whose social
needs are met often desperately need the physical elements of
water, or food, and the like.
This is a critical error in
corporate human profiling and stratification, or rather the
organization of people and groups of people around the world
on a macro and micro scale, and one that cannot be resolved
overnight. The other significant concern is that this is a
serious issue as opposed to a mild issue in that the two
groups due to social attitudes do not communicate with each
other, more often the people needing social support do not
communicate whereas the ones needing physical support do. What
can we do to help alleviate these stresses and tensions? What
can we do to stimulate a better quality of life for people on
our planet? What can we do to ensure that senior citizens have
companions that homeless people find shelter, that children
have friends, and that everyone has a family; a shoulder to
cry on, a sibling to rely on, a parent that cares?
Today we know that the brain
synthesizes a state of contentment, and that people will look
to the best in every situation no matter how terrible their
own is – which is most likely part of the reason we live as
long as we do biologically; however despite this, many people
suffer from depression. The brain tells people they are
missing a fundamental need, and in these cases we realize that
the physical needs no longer can solve for the social needs
that we have. Traditionally we give people who suffer from
social deprivation a pill or medication, or teach them to
self-medicate with alcohol or other drugs. These temporary
solutions work – though only temporarily. They also cause
physical harm and age us faster and aid the manifestation of
social deprivation in the physical body in the forms of blood
pressure change or in the form of a heart attack or stroke.
Something has to be done about
mental health for people around the world. As physical needs
can be met easily through the purchase and shipping of water
and food, or the construction of shelter, mental health and
wellness cannot. We cannot go to the supermarket and buy
mental health, we cannot go into a forest and listen for the
sound of mental health and walk towards it. We cannot drink it
or eat it, but we need it in order to survive.
The ONAMAP Foundation is now
working to help balance the scale between psycho-social and
physical needs in communities starting in Canada, and moving
out to the rest of the world. Help us empower the future.
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