The benefits of Volunteering

As most people know, helping others by doing something meaningful with your talents enriches your life far beyond what is possible when everything revolves around you.

We all have different skill sets and temperaments that determine the best way we can volunteer to help others. Not all of us are suited to serve in a soup kitchen or aboard a hospital ship in Africa, or as a spokesperson for a worthy cause.

On a routine skin check, my doctor Mileham Hayes casually asked me to read a one page synopsis of a book he was writing for the general reader. It was called The Missing Keys: The Medical Avoidance of Illness and Disability. It piqued my interest, and after I read the whole book I wrote a review.

It is a brilliant book.  Dr Hayes draws on Big Data to map the reader’s path to a longer life and optimal personal health. The specific direction this path takes will depend on the reader’s sex and age. Based on information about the health problems most likely to kill or disable us in any decade, one can choose to take the steps necessary to head these problems off at the pass. It’s up to us to make our own customised health plan and take responsibility to follow through. Of course it is no surprise that the biggest hurdles to an optimal outcome are the high-risk behaviours: smoking, consumption of processed foods, physical inactivity and over-eating.

Dr Hayes felt that the proof reading service he used for The Missing Keys left much to be desired so he was deliberating whether to use it for his subsequent book, Newtrition: The PHYTO Diet: The most complete, evidenced foods to prevent illnesses.  Editing was something I could do, and given the importance of the topic I saw it as an opportunity to help others, not just Dr Hayes but also everyone who wanted to read this book.  So I volunteered my time and benefited from learning more about healthy eating habits as I proof-read Newtrition.  

I continued to help in the proof-reading of the final two books in the Live Longest series: Successful Aging: The Avoidance of Declines in Capacity and Health (The Quality of Life and Death) and Slim 4 Life: The Total Weight Control Program.

Slim 4 Life is a practical, realistic guide to slimming down.  Not only did I benefit from the knowledge that I was helping others through my proof-reading, but I applied what I was reading and ended up with a slimmer self.  Slim 4 Life is the perfect sequel to Newtrition which details a micronutrient rich version of the traditional Mediterranean diet.  In a world where so much is beyond our control, committing to a sensible weight loss program which is entirely in our control can boost your self-esteem.  Will power and determination are critical, so don’t start the Slim 4 Life journey unless you are ready to be determined, dedicated, disciplined, resolved, devoted and restrained. I have already lost 3.5 kg and I want to lose another 2 kg.  It helped to focus on the nutritional foods I love, rather than the junk food I had to avoid. When cravings started to stir, I followed Dr Hayes’ tip to redirect and ‘do something different’.

Heirloom

Queensland, my home state in Australia, has a coal mining heritage that will be a major challenge for global warming abatement. How and when we can make a just transition from coal to renewable energy sources is one of the top concerns of the climate activist movements that protest in Brisbane, such as Australian Parents for Climate Action, School Strike 4 Climate, Stop Adani and Extinction Rebellion (XR).

The Jacarandas were in bloom as I strolled home past New Farm Park on Saturday afternoon. I stopped to take a photo.  My timing was perfect, it seemed, because Trevor Evans our federal member for Brisbane was under his tent top open for consultation with his constituents. No queue, I walked right up to him and told him that the biggest worry for me as a grandmother was the health of the planet. What state of deterioration would I be handing over to my precious grand children? What was Queensland government doing to divest from fossil fuel?

Clearly we were not divesting anytime soon, and I knew that would be the case because Brisbane City Council (BCC) had recently refused to declare a climate emergency when many other councils already had.  But in fairness to Trevor he redirected me to the positive achievements and innovations that were moving us in the right direction.  Number one on his list was that BCC was carbon neutral certified.

We discussed how energy storage, a major challenge for transitioning to renewable energy was being addressed.  He was proud of the Snowy Hydro Project designed to push water uphill when wind and solar energy are plentiful and release it when required during prolonged weather events. Mountainous terrain is scarce in Australia, so hydro-electricity projects will not proliferate. However, in the tiny island State of Tasmania we do have a few mountains, and there are already big plans to position Tasmania as the renewable energy Battery of the Nation by building a connecting tunnel to the mainland under Bass Straight.

While I’m heartened by these innovative steps toward a more sustainable future, Queensland’s relationship with coal remains the elephant in the room.  There is no plan to phase out coal, not now and not in the foreseeable future. There’s not even a hint of a carbon tax to account for the external costs of polluting the atmosphere. Our State and Federal governments are willfully destroying Planet Earth, our home, our habitat, the most precious heirloom that can be passed on to a grandchild.



Counting down to the last goodbye

I’m a grandmother who cares deeply about the state of the planet my grand children will inherit. I’m counting down to my own death which if all goes well will be when I am 90, so I have approximately 21 years left. I am also counting down the time we have left to rescue planet Earth from irreversible damage.

My blog is organised in four sections: Life, Health, Community and Climate Change

I am making my blog public because

  • My experiences and insights on life may help other parents and grandparents
  • I accept the science of climate change and I want to be part of the dialogue that helps communities find their courage and voice to stand behind the science in the midst of a noisy and sometimes hostile crowd that refuses to educate itself on the reality of human-induced global warming
  • I have a research masters in Economics from the University of Queensland and I want to use my education and research skills to collaborate with others on critical topics of vulnerability, resilience and adaptation to climate change