Food & Drink
Everything you consume, except prescribed medicine.
Ready to watch a lawyer dance with words? Put on some polka in the background and settle into a comfy position.
Food and drink, for most people, in my humble experience, and yours, probably, is both the easiest problem to solve in our existence and quite possibly the easiest to blame for our unhappiness; especially in the 21st century.
Can you believe that crap? That was my first attempt opening this chapter. Besides the robotic drone tone you’ve heard in every other salesman piece, it screams: I don’t want to call you a _!
Guess what? You’re about to call yourself a _. Do it. Right now! Do it! Call yourself it. Set this down and go somewhere you know you can be alone and out of earshot of people. If not, get ready to whisper or say the words in your head. Ready? One, two, three…
Stop it! No way in got damn pooh-perfect hell are you calling yourself any of that bull spit from now on. You’re a human. Look at you. Go! If anything is going to be done in the next five minutes it is going to be that! Go look at your flawed-ass! Sure, you may have MEANT to be the statue of perfection and all that jazz, but you’re not. But…but…but let’s stop here for a hot second. What is “all that jazz” stuff you just let me get away with? For some reason, you know what that means. I don’t. Yeah, I’m breaking down the fourth wall a little bit, but we need to build some rapport. I need to connect with you and you need to know I’m not full of empty promises. Let’s face it, I am not a formally educated expert inside food and drink. I don’t have letters after my name that can point to a book of work that proves I know what I’m talking about. Sure, I have photos of myself at a time when I weighed well over one hundred pounds more than I do now. But that’s what worked for me, my schedule, and my objectives. All of those are different for you. Thus, I’m here to admit that the only reason any of the words in this sentence exist, and all of them up there, is because I need words. My editor is requiring me to give them at least 900 words to fill at least the first two full pages of this thing so it looks pretty. The problem is what I had written for this task was the paragraph that comes next and that list. I revised it over and over. It is 452 words to this point. Thus, all this has been blush bluff puffery to this point. What’s written below is all that needs to be said. This is a very simple task, but it’s all inside you. “All that jazz,” we’re talking about is your potential. It’s still there. It hasn’t gone anywhere. As for being good inside food and drink, you know exactly what to put inside your body: it’s what the experts tell you. That means you shouldn't listen to me, your family, co-workers, social media, workout buddies, or even yourself! Go ask the experts what you should be consuming, then do it. But the problem isn’t knowledge, is it? The problem is you’re trying to use food and drink as a source of happiness and enjoyment in life. Ready for one of those laws of human existence? Unless it is literally your job, food and drink can NEVER bring you joy or happiness on its own.
As most people chase the emotion of happiness rather than the mindset of enjoying life through a balance of effort, focus, restriction, and gratitude, food becomes the most readily available and most easily accessible resource to consume. And understandably so. Food tastes amazing these days! Have you had a big bowl or plate of anything lately? It’s amazing; like, objectively the greatest thing in the world - to you. We all know we can’t exist as a species if everyone laid around consuming all the best tasting stuff all the time. Instead, we must find our happiness inside our efforts and relationships, not external things. That means never seeking the emotion of happiness from food. The purpose of food is to fuel your body to have energy to give to other people and things. The Earth has provided a lot of that fuel in abundant quantities, but we instead choose to put crap in our face that was mushed together by humans who think they can outthink nature. As if Little Debbie has anything up against a ripe fruit. Yet, here we are eating mostly stuff put together by humans. And stop using food as a way to put a smile on your face. Smiles should come from interacting with people and projects, not a plate or bowl of something.
If you have a plan, do your thing; but do it goodly. If you don’t, this is what the Stoics told me to do about food and drink:
Drink nothing but water until your work is done.
Eat from the Earth, not from humans
Seek to consume what you need, not what you want.
Seek the minimum fare, accept luxuries only when they come from others and without arrogance or emotion attached to the experience, showing only gratitude.
Cravings are cured by removing every possible ability to consume the things you want or feel you need. Maintenance is the boring planning and satiation of your needs. That doesn’t happen if you don’t separate your wants.
Wants can happen, but everything is always in moderation, even when trying to practice perfection.
If you care: 970 total words.
