The Wisdom of Socrates (Chapter Two)
“Think different.”
Legend has it that the great philosopher Socrates was once asked by his student, Plato, how he could acquire the knowledge Socrates possessed. Socrates, the wisest man on Earth in his era, invited Plato to walk with him along the beach. The mentor and his pupil walked in silence through the soft sand at the edge of the calm waters. As they stepped into the sea, the water rose to their ankles, then their knees, followed by their waists and chests, and eventually their shoulders.
When they made their way deeper into the sea until the water reached their necks, Socrates seized Plato and submerged him under the water, steadily holding him beneath the waves.
Plato at first wondered with puzzlement what Socrates was trying to teach him but in due course was overtaken by abject terror as he struggled to raise his head above the water while Socrates securely held him beneath. Eventually, Plato passed out as the fight left his body. Socrates lifted and dragged the unconscious Plato to shore and revived him. On regaining consciousness, Plato, with his eyes bloodshot and his face flush with fury, lashed out in rage and accused Socrates of trying to murder him. Socrates assured Plato that if he had wanted to murder him, he would not have returned him to shore and resuscitated him.
Then came the lesson.
Socrates asked," When I held you under the water, how much did you desire a breath of air?"
Plato responded, "At that moment, I desired air more than anything else."
"And what were you willing to give up to get that breath of air?" pressed Socrates.
"I would have given up everything to save my life," replied Plato.
Socrates, at last, answered Plato's question about the quest for knowledge, "When you want knowledge as much as you had wanted air, then you shall have it."
This is a story of sacrifice. A story about giving up everything we have known, or everyone we have loved, for the sake of something greater, about laying our life down for something bigger than ourselves. This is a story about focusing, laboring, and expending our energy to breathe. And in that process, giving up everything - our relationships, our jobs, our livelihood, our sanity, our life - for a breath of air.
There is nothing more important than air, and there are two ways to get a breath of air. One is natural, while the other requires tremendous sacrifice. One brings health and strength and the other disease and weakness. One allows us to lead the life we were meant to lead, while the other causes adaptations that change our development path. It is of vital importance to do whatever is in our power to choose the correct way.
There is no sacrifice when taking a breath through the nose. Love and happiness nourish the mind, body, and soul. We are breathing the way God intended. Perhaps we can even hear Him, His whispers in each breath, a gentle voice that comforts and beckons us toward a life of well-being. It is in our hearts, right now, if only we could hear.
When taking a breath through the mouth, a different and darker image emerges. We unwittingly choose between freedom and subjugation, serenity and suffering. A simple, self-preserving, and seemingly harmless act on the surface comes at a tremendous cost. In seeking that precious breath of air, we lay vulnerable to disease and undergo unnatural adaptations that ignite a pervasive disturbance of life that begins in childhood and persists into adulthood until our last dying breath.
It is time to examine your life, your ways, the paths you have taken, and those ahead of you where the road forks, and the decisions you will need to make at that time. It begins with one question.
Do you breathe through your mouth?
Most will say "No."
Most will be wrong.
It hadn't always been this way. You were born the way nature intended. You breathed through your nose, and your irresistible giggles brought sunshine to your mother. The happy thoughts shined out of your face like sunbeams.
Somewhere along the way, you opened your mouth. First a little, then a bit more. Sometime very early in life, you begin breathing through your nose and mouth. With that, the first domino was knocked over, which toppled the second, fell the third, and so on as the fateful adaptions to an unnatural way of breathing began. The ugliness grew upon your face day by day, every week, year after year. Ugly thoughts filled your mind and engorged your soul to the point you could no longer contain them, and now and then, mean-spirited words came tumbling out to unsuspecting friends, family, and lovers. You regrettably traded balance in life for a subtle title in posture, health for disease. You swapped a soothing existence that lends itself to healing for one of inflammation that ravages your body. And sleep, the most natural thing in the world, suddenly becomes unnatural.
Why would you defy millions of years of evolution and switch to breathing through the nose and mouth only to suffer? It began thousands of years ago when you abandoned the beauty and bounty of nature for the confines of a cell called home. The cesspool of allergens stuffed your nose, and the foods of convenience weakened your face. Together, ultimately, your mouth fell open.
The lion is one of the most alluring, charismatic, and noble animals to grace our planet. His face is beautiful to admire. He is part of nature and developed the way nature intended. His powerful look comes from his powerful jaws. You would never question the strength of his bite. He can use his jaws to tear the flesh of prey. That said, the lion kills not for pleasure but for survival. To remain alive, the muscles and bones of his face have magnificently strengthened and developed to endure the arduous labor of grasping and consuming prey.
Imagine taking a lion from nature, placing him in your home, and forcing him to live as you live. With a knife and fork in paw, he carefully cuts flesh that is fancifully fried and vegetables that are softly steamed and delicately places little bits, one morsel at a time, into his mouth. What would happen in time to the strength of the muscles in his face by gently consuming succulent meals that melt in his mouth? What would happen if he only did a tiny fraction of the chewing he otherwise would have done in the wild? Would he still be majestic?
Conversely, how would you cope if placed in the wild? If you had to hunt and gather food for survival as our ancestors did many years ago? If you had to utilize your jaws drastically more than you do now? Surely the muscles in the face would be immensely stronger, and you may look and feel entirely different.
What is transpiring? Are we evolving or devolving? Has our proclivity to maximize gains and minimize effort led to a refinement of diet toward a more pleasurable food that is softer in consistency and higher in calories? In addition to cooking and cutting food, does drinking from a baby bottle, sipping from a sippy cup, and consuming processed bars, juices, bread, snacks, and yogurt reduce our masticatory effort per calorie? Are we emphasizing different diets - vegetarian, vegan, Atkins, South Beach, Mediterranean, et cetera - but losing sight of the most critical aspect of all: the hardness.
Eating soft foods weakens the mastication muscles, including the masseter, temporalis, and medial pterygoid muscles, making mouth breathing certain.
Welcome to the smoothie generation. The good news is you are evolving. The bad news is you are evolving to eat mush.
Chapter Two Conclusion