Day 692: Quality of Life

In yesterday’s post, I cited (and did other things to) a study about quality of life.  But what IS quality of life? Let’s see how other people qualify and quantitate “quality of life,” shall we?

Here’s the first definition returned by Google:

Quality of life (QOL) is the general well-being of individuals and societies. QOL has a wide range of contexts, including the fields of international development, healthcare, politics and employment. Quality of life should not be confused with the concept of standard of living, which is based primarily on income.

I have no idea where that definition came from; it just appeared without citation.

Q:  Does that affect my quality of life?

A: No.

Wikipedia, my lovely assistant in many of these posts, has an entry, page, or whatever-else-you-might-call-it on ‘Quality of life.”  Care to join me in discovering how “Quality of life” is explained in Wikipedia-land?

Aha!  The first paragraph of the Wikipedia page is VERY CLOSE to the definition I included in this post.

Q: Does that affect my quality of life?

A: No.

The first paragraph of the Wikipedia page includes this one additional sentence about Quality of Life (abbreviated to QOL, since Quality of Life, I guess, includes using abbreviations to save everybody time and effort):

Instead, standard indicators of the quality of life include not only wealth and employment but also the built environment, physical and mental health, education, recreation and leisure time, and social belonging.

Q: Does that affect my QOL?

A: Well, I like built environments, physical and mental health, education, recreation and leisure time, and social belonging. Does that answer the question?

How is your quality of life, right now? Would your QOL improve if I kept defining QOL?  Or do you think you know what Quality of Life means — to you and to other people?

Quality of Life is something I have been thinking a lot about lately.  Duh.  Why else would I be writing a post about it today?

As I’ve oft expressed since I started writing this blog way back in 2013, I write here, every day, to improve my Quality of Life and, so far, it’s been working. And yet, I’ve never written about QOL before today.

Here are my conscious reasons for writing about Quality of Life, right now:

• I am getting very mixed messages from my two cardiologists about my current and future QOL.
• Mixed messages adversely affect my Quality of Life.
• I am constantly on the lookout for ways to maintain — or even improve — quality of life for myself (and others, too).
• I had to write about SOMETHING, people.

Here are two things that improve my quality of life:

#1.  Carol.

Carol has been improving my QOL since the 1980’s. I first met her the week before I was scheduled for yet-another-in-a-long-series of pacemaker replacement surgeries.

At that time, my quality of life was negatively affected by a persistent feeling of cold in my back that just would not go away, no matter what I did. My business partner at the time, Jonathan, told me that Carol could help me.  Here’s a memory of my first conversation with Carol:

Me: I’ve had many surgeries in my life and I’m scheduled for another one, next week. And I’ve got this weird feeling of cold in the middle of my back, that won’t go away.

Carol: That makes sense. That’s fear.

I remember, that day, feeling understood in a new and profound way, which really improved  my QOL.

Yesterday, Carol improved my Quality of Life during an often difficult day for me: November 22 — the anniversary of my first surgery at age 10 AND the day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

Here are some of the things Carol said to me, yesterday:

• You are incredibly healthy.
• You look beautiful, like a Russian Princess, to me.

That improved my quality of life.

Duh.

#2.  Cats.

  

That’s Mambo — our neighbor cat — adding to my “social belonging”  in my “built environment” by getting into my car after I returned from getting my hair cut by Mia (who also improves my Quality of Life, every time I see her).

What else do I want to include about QOL, in this post?  I would like to wrap things up soon, so I can finish writing a proposal today for presenting a workshop about the therapy groups I do (which I hope improve the Quality of Life of others).

Music definitely improves my Quality of Life, and I often include a musical selection in my posts. But I also have trouble making decisions. And what song would fit today’s post?

Actually, what song would NOT fit? Every piece of music I love (and there are so many) improves my quality of life, whenever I hear it. So how do I choose among them all, this morning?

Arrrrghhh!

I know! I’ll do a random spin of Spotify, my current music delivery system (which also improves my QOL), and see what comes up.

Aha!  It’s a repeat, from a recent post, but will that decrease anybody’s quality of life?

Actually, that’s a different version of Sting performing “What Have We Got?” from The Last Ship (found here on YouTube, if that helps improve your QOL).

That video, from NBC’s Today Show,  reminds me of two things — an event in the past and one in the future:

1. My late father told me a story, many years ago, about how he and my mother, when visiting New York City, were outside looking in the studio windows during a live broadcast of The Today Show, when a good friend of theirs, who was up on a ladder at his home near Boston, suddenly saw them there on his TV and was so surprised, he fell off the ladder (thus temporarily diminishing his QOL).
2. My friend Deb (previously appearing in posts including here,here, and here) and I are going to NYC in two weekends to see The Last Ship on Broadway!

How do you think all this affects my QOL?  What affects yours?

Thanks to Google, Wikipedia, Carol, Mambo, Mia, Deb, my doctors, my parents, Sting, Spotify, randomness, and to everybody and anything that’s ever improved anybody’s Quality of Life in any way, which includes you (in case you didn’t know)*.

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* Duh.