You can read more in this excellent Axios article New cancer diagnoses expected to hit record high this year
I think the causes for this are obvious. An old WHO article said that 90% of diseases are stress-related. The fact is that people are more stressed now than ever before. Between the fear of impending job loss, record divorce rates, contamination of food/water, and questionable future for the planet people are feeling understandably nervous. Business as usual has gotten us here, and business as usual will continue to kill us.
One way to fix this on a personal level is to be as stress-free as possible. Not easy, but possible. Each day I let go of the things that I can’t change and I accept as many things as I can. This doesn’t mean that I suggest giving up. No. We all have a responsibility to leave the world a better place than we found it. However we need to be reasonable about what we can do, and do what we can in our sphere of influence.
For me, writing this and sharing this information is what I can do. Perhaps people already know it but haven’t put the pieces together. Or if they have put the pieces together, perhaps they need a reminder. I try to learn from the people around me so that I don’t make the same mistakes that they have. I would be thrilled for you to learn from my mistakes. One of my mistakes was making things more important than they really were in the past.
It is really easy to feel life or death about certain topics in our lives. We can feel this way about our jobs, health, or relationships for example. However, the fact is that in the final analysis, we don’t control those things. At any time our partner/job can let us go and that is ok. We get sick and that is ok too. It is part of life to have loss, and we can survive loss and bounce back. I am proof of that. I have survived many losses but I knew I would be ok because I couldn’t image the universe creating me and not having a purpose for me. Now I see that I can help and make a difference in my friends and people I love lives, it is so clear what I need to do.
I think we lack a compelling why to live, and we have replaced meaning and purpose in life with money/materialism. I have watched many YouTube videos of women/men saying they have great careers, cars, and houses and lack love. I wonder why they thought that spending all of their time on material things would make them happy. Aren’t we smarter than that?