Happy New Year!
As we step into another year, I want to share a special story with you.
Recently, I found a photo of a husband and wife posing on my veranda here in Forth.
It’s dated 1886 and our house was called The Manse, Hamilton on Forth.
Eventually, locals dropped the name Hamilton and simply called it Forth, after the Fourth major river from the Tamar. (The Rubicon, the Mersey, the Don, the Forth and the Leven rivers)
Our house, freshly built from weatherboards, stands stark against a backdrop of a dying forest—a reminder of the times when ringbarking made its mark on Australia’s landscape.
Fast forward to today, where Pete and I had the joy of recreating this picture.
Sitting on the same veranda, we are now surrounded by lush well maintained gardens resembling paradise itself.
The original owners could never, in their wildest dreams have imagined the way Pete and I enjoy living in this house on the same property 140 years later, without any of the hardships they faced!
Let’s step back in time and see how far we have come as a humanity.
Here are some cringeworthy beliefs that dictated people’s lives in the 1880’s:
- If steam trains went faster than a horse could run, women could lose their uteruses.
- People travelled in trepidation, because any mode of transportation at high speeds (30 miles per hour) could cause insanity due to the human body not being equipped at such velocities.
- On the topic of uteruses, there was a persistent belief that a woman’s womb was a separate creature that could move around the body, creating all sorts of problems. They even had a name for it. It was called the Wandering Womb.
- Wearing a tightly laced corset was healthy for women, supporting internal organs and promoting good posture. This was despite the numerous health problems they caused e.g. deformed ribs, fainting and reduced lung capacity, leading to a shortened life span.
- Avoiding delicious tomatoes due to fear of poisoning. (tomatoes belong to the deadly nightshade family, the same as potatoes)
- Highly toxic mercury was a popular medical treatment for syphilis and a common ingredient in teething powders for infants (this lasted till the late 1930’s)
- It was thought that maggots could be spontaneously generated from rotting meat
- Drilling or scraping a hole into the skull was ‘an effective’ treatment for mental disorders. It was believed to ease pressure or release evil spirits.
- The speed and noise of automobiles would disrupt the natural world, causing cows to stop producing milk and hens to stop laying eggs.
- When talking movies first replaced ‘silent’ films, many in the industry believed that it was just a passing fad. They thought that audiences would prefer to see actors performing without the distraction of their actual voices!
- When it came to telephones: people worried that having a device that could connect you instantly with someone else was unnatural and could erode the fabric of society.
- Water and washing could invite and create all sorts of diseases, so it was discouraged. People stank.
- Being lefthanded was seen as a defect and something that had to be severely dealt with.
No wonder the woman in our photo doesn’t seem to be smiling back in 1880.
I wondered why they didn’t take a closeup photo, but then I discovered that back in the day, some people believed that a photograph could capture your soul and steal your essence.
How scary!
Perhaps that’s the reason why people posing in old photos always had their funeral face on!
Thanks to advancements in science, education and every other area of our lives, we can now live in prosperity and abundance and are better off than royalty back in the past.
We don’t have to spend days boiling, scrubbing, bleaching, rinsing, wringing and starching our laundry in primitive circumstances.
Doing the laundry used to be gruelling work for women and could take up entire days every week.
Of course the lady in the photo didn’t have a vacuum cleaner, so she had to broom and brush the floors, take the carpets outside and beat them, and use a dustpan and brush for all the rest.
Then she still had to mop the beautiful Baltic Pine floors, like I do today.
The man in the photo was probably busy clearing the land, felling and cutting the ringbarked trees by hand, to make room for agricultural practices.
Back in the 1880 the life expectancy was around 39 to 40 years, so they were probably in the sunset years of their lives, even though they look young to me.
This short life expectancy was heavily influenced by high infant mortality rates.
Diseases like measles, whooping cough, diphtheria, and gastrointestinal infections were major killers of infants and young children.
Once you made it past childhood, your chances of survival and living into your 60’s or 70’s would increase.
However, as an adult, you could still die prematurely from tuberculosis, pneumonia, and cholera.
Antibiotics weren’t discovered till the 1940’s so even relatively minor health issues became life threatening.
People would die from appendicitis, dental issues gone wrong, or accidents, injuries and drownings.
The couple sitting on my veranda in 1886 could expect to lose two out of five children.
Giving birth was risky.
Women could assume to die during childbirth, at a rate of 1000 maternal deaths per 100000 live births. (or 1 per 100 births)
Many women were in poor health, due to overwork, lack of nutrition and hard living conditions, making them more vulnerable to complications during childbirth.
Women in Australia often suffered severe isolation as well.
When you stop to think about it, 140 years isn’t much time in the scheme of things, but we have seen dramatic lifestyle changes!
If your ancestors could see you today, what would they say to you?
I believe they CAN see you, and they would encourage you to stop sweating the small stuff, count your blessings and to celebrate your life (and yourself) every day!
You are standing on the shoulders of your ancestors.
Now, I am not saying that today’s hectic lifestyle isn’t without its challenges, but we can hop in our nice comfy car, and drive to the supermarket at top speed without fear of losing our uterus or our sanity.
The supermarket is packed to the hilt with incredible produce and all sorts of things we don’t need, but they are there just in case we want them.
We have vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, hot water on tap, washing machines, dryers, computers, smart phones, pain killers, modern medicine and antibiotics to save lives, and we have all the knowledge of the entire universe available at our fingertips.
We can travel the world in relative luxury.
If you have a question, you can find the answer overnight on your own laptop and you can use your left hand as much as you like, without getting punished for it.
We never have to get bored because there is so much to experience.
No matter which way you look at it, humans have never had it better.
And we can connect with each other instantly, so crippling isolation and homesickness is a thing of the past.
I wonder what future humans will say about us in a hundred- and forty-years’ time.
What limiting beliefs do you have that people in the future are going to shake their heads about?
Perhaps they are going to find it incomprehensible that billions of humans today believe that their body and mind are two separate entities.
That you can just treat your body with pills and drugs, without addressing the mental aspect of your problems.
As if your mind has nothing to do with your pain, scarcity, and sabotages.
That you can just think crappy thoughts and watch the news without realizing that all this information (which is a form of energy) pours into the cells of your body, creating stress, overwhelm and illness.
That only a few million humans understand the power of mindset and energy medicine, or that your body and mind are one and form a complete unit.
That every thought can make you or break you.
That you need to pay attention to where your primary focus is in your life.
Are you going to have your nose in the rubbish bin or are you going to appreciate what is good about yourself or your life?
Albert Einstein realized the importance of having a positive mindset.
He said, “There are two ways to look at the world – either everything is a miracle or nothing is a miracle.”
Einstein understood that we only see on billionth of reality and he chose to see miracles everywhere except for in his wife because he treated her poorly.
He had extra-marital affairs and was emotionally unavailable to her and his children.
Historians fondly called him a complex character, but I would say that he was a street angel and a home devil.
Mileva Marić Einstein faced significant prejudice and unfair treatment as a woman in the early 20th century.
She was also a brilliant physicist and mathematician but being a woman put her behind the eight ball.
Overcoming these challenges, as well as having a congenital hip deformity, bearing and raising children would have required every ounce of resilience.
She stayed strong and kept loving her work in physics, learning and talking about science even though people did not give her much credit for her ideas.
In the end, they both created the BEST possible life for themselves, given their challenges and circumstances.
I believe that today, we can do better than Albert and Mileva.
We can seek support and receive guidance and transformation from others who are a few steps ahead of us, and learn from inspiration, rather than from desperation!
You can go through challenging times by connecting to the light of your own consciousness every day.
Instead of trying to fill your cup up from the outside, fill it up from the inside first.
When that happens, you become connected to an endless source of positive energy.
Celebrate what is right in your world and turn it into a daily practice.
Thank you for being a part of my community, I love and appreciate you!
Wishing you a prosperous and joyful New Year!
With love,
