Coopslave's anti-smoking add brings this to mind for me. Something I struggle with.
If I have to suffer through one more holier-than-thou exercise for 40 minutes a day, eat right, drive slow, don't smoke, cut out wheat SERMON, I might throw up!
Oh my good Gordon, we have become a generation of people who think we have to live long at any cost. Well guess what, you're going to be dead at the end of this ride anyway! YOu can be dead NOT eating cream cheese (and wishing you had) or you can just be dead thinking, wow, that bagel and cream cheese was amazing!
How much denial makes sense and how much denial is just puritanical preaching that makes you think you're so much better than the fat slob next to you on the bus. What if, just what if, that fat slob has a whole lot more fun in his life than you do? He may die sooner, but maybe he'll die having lived more? Longer is not MORE! Longer without wine and cream cheese and toast with peanut butter can just bloody well be a long, miserable life sentence of putting in time. Time being good, but not having a good time!
What is the point of this life? To die thinking you did it better than the next guy? Pfft, get over yourself. I have pondered this question and I have no solid answer to what is the point. But I look around at the factions that preach exercise, being thin, getting sleep, eating unprocessed foods, blah, blah, blah and I wonder, what the hell are these people going on about? What are they really selling? Really? THEY ARE SELLING FEAR! FEAR! And the false illusion that you can do something to prolong your life. Fear and delusions wrapped up in one bundle of fantastic marketing.
Do I want to drop dead tomorrow? No. Do I want to drop dead at 90? Depends. Maybe if between now and 90 all I do is obsess about what I'm eating, how much weight I'm gaining, what my blood pressure and cholesterol are doing, how other drivers are driving...maybe if my life becomes a spastic worry about staying alive to fret and worry one more day, maybe I'm better off dead?
So many enjoyable things are bad for you. News flash, the number one cause of death, is life. So. What should I do when a skinny chick in spandex jogs past me on the park bench as I eat my bagel and cream cheese and she tut tuts at my lack of health related choices, what should I do? Should I throw down my bagel and join her in a jog? Hell no! I should stick out my foot and trip the uppity witch. Take that, you spandex clad zealot! As healthy as you are, you never know what's going to get you.
Children should be protected from bad choices because children are stupid. But when you are older and you know that there is an end to all of this, an end that you really cannot control no matter what you want to believe, then you are stupid to deny the pleasures that there are. Do you want to be a good looking, fat free, GMO free, cholesterol free corpse? Well knock yourself out. But I want to die with a smile on my face and my marker will read," Ate what she wanted, Did what she wanted, Had fun, are any of you other dead people any better off?"
(sighing deeply, shaking head) I get that we should not make bad choices. I get that living well means sometimes saying no to (I can't think of anything but I'm sure some of our better living members can). I get that to a point taking care of yourself is your responsibility so you hopefully do not become a burden on anyone else. BUT....there are those believers who take everything to an extreme. I get very tired of the preachy preachy tone our world is taking on.
In 2014, I plan on taking up some bad habits. And the first person who shakes a preachy fingera t me is likely to find that finger served to them on a toasted bagel with cream cheese!
If I have to suffer through one more holier-than-thou exercise for 40 minutes a day, eat right, drive slow, don't smoke, cut out wheat SERMON, I might throw up!
Oh my good Gordon, we have become a generation of people who think we have to live long at any cost. Well guess what, you're going to be dead at the end of this ride anyway! YOu can be dead NOT eating cream cheese (and wishing you had) or you can just be dead thinking, wow, that bagel and cream cheese was amazing!
How much denial makes sense and how much denial is just puritanical preaching that makes you think you're so much better than the fat slob next to you on the bus. What if, just what if, that fat slob has a whole lot more fun in his life than you do? He may die sooner, but maybe he'll die having lived more? Longer is not MORE! Longer without wine and cream cheese and toast with peanut butter can just bloody well be a long, miserable life sentence of putting in time. Time being good, but not having a good time!
What is the point of this life? To die thinking you did it better than the next guy? Pfft, get over yourself. I have pondered this question and I have no solid answer to what is the point. But I look around at the factions that preach exercise, being thin, getting sleep, eating unprocessed foods, blah, blah, blah and I wonder, what the hell are these people going on about? What are they really selling? Really? THEY ARE SELLING FEAR! FEAR! And the false illusion that you can do something to prolong your life. Fear and delusions wrapped up in one bundle of fantastic marketing.
Do I want to drop dead tomorrow? No. Do I want to drop dead at 90? Depends. Maybe if between now and 90 all I do is obsess about what I'm eating, how much weight I'm gaining, what my blood pressure and cholesterol are doing, how other drivers are driving...maybe if my life becomes a spastic worry about staying alive to fret and worry one more day, maybe I'm better off dead?
So many enjoyable things are bad for you. News flash, the number one cause of death, is life. So. What should I do when a skinny chick in spandex jogs past me on the park bench as I eat my bagel and cream cheese and she tut tuts at my lack of health related choices, what should I do? Should I throw down my bagel and join her in a jog? Hell no! I should stick out my foot and trip the uppity witch. Take that, you spandex clad zealot! As healthy as you are, you never know what's going to get you.
Children should be protected from bad choices because children are stupid. But when you are older and you know that there is an end to all of this, an end that you really cannot control no matter what you want to believe, then you are stupid to deny the pleasures that there are. Do you want to be a good looking, fat free, GMO free, cholesterol free corpse? Well knock yourself out. But I want to die with a smile on my face and my marker will read," Ate what she wanted, Did what she wanted, Had fun, are any of you other dead people any better off?"
(sighing deeply, shaking head) I get that we should not make bad choices. I get that living well means sometimes saying no to (I can't think of anything but I'm sure some of our better living members can). I get that to a point taking care of yourself is your responsibility so you hopefully do not become a burden on anyone else. BUT....there are those believers who take everything to an extreme. I get very tired of the preachy preachy tone our world is taking on.
In 2014, I plan on taking up some bad habits. And the first person who shakes a preachy fingera t me is likely to find that finger served to them on a toasted bagel with cream cheese!
, and felt bad about my muscle bound legs my whole life cause I didn't have those elegant skinny jobs that the cool girls did, I have to seek hi and low to find zipper boots that will fit my calves - until I didn't feel bad one day, whew, what a relief 
). That good/bad thing is such a mighty and yet impossible thing to reckon with. Nothing quite so groovy as that saying that goes "honor amongst thieves" - what is good and bad is all relative. I loved my smoking years. It was love and hate though. In the end I resolved to love it while I did it because I know that if I have an attitude about it being bad for me then that is what I'd get. If I could master that attitude then bully for me but in the end I knew I didn't have it in me so had to quit, my life would have been shorter and I do want a long life cause I got a lot to do in it before I wear the body out and need a new one. I know of a philosophy that says if you believe something is poison for you then so it will be. That is quantum physics actually. What the observer sees and accepts as real then so it is. Google the double slit experiment. It is non-classical science which confounds the classical scientists and it is a piss off to people who like nice neat tidy boxes of good and bad, right and wrong. Basically it means we are powerful. What we put our mind and will to effects our reality. No one likes to teach that in school to kids cause social conditioning to accept "normalcy" seems to take priority, be a good boy or girl like so and so ya ya ya yaaaaaaaa. grrr. this is a bug bear with me. 
) but I disagree with you, kids are not stupid wholeus bollus across the board. So many factors influence our lives (genes, soul agenda, social environment . . . ) but if the awareness is cultivated and allowed to grow in them (as opposed to being squashed and stomped on by adults and society to dumb down as in many school situations - what prompted me to home school until I burned out) they often see right through the false veneer of silly game and drama that adults often get totally involved in. When I say to my sons to do such and such, and they don't want to, I get "but you don't do it" - they are teenagers now, I taught them to think for themselves and this was risky of course because I also taught them about hipocrassy! I know this sounds pious and squeaky clean but stuff it, I stand by it. I still haven't had a good argument given me as to why "do as I say, not as I do" is really sound ethic. I just buck that system.
coffee with the girls more often than once a month. Today was a bad 
day and I'm hoping this s--t year will just be done with me and the next will be better. Fingers xx'd it will be better, I'm wishing with all my might that it will be better.
