First Posted 07-Jan-2015
I’m confused because I was in Whole Foods again and reminded that parts of the store are conflicting for me. I have my new year’s resolutions like many this time of year. I need to lose 30lbs, save at least $2500.00, build an emergency fund, improve on the success I had in 2014. But, Whole Foods just messes with the plan. It’s a gorgeous store. Lots of expensive, cool stuff I don’t normally buy. Obscure, great smelling coffee beans, an amazing cheese section, if you have been there, you know.
Then . . . the bakery aisle. Uhm, why? Why sell “healthy” doughnuts. For me, the point of doughnuts is that they are sweet, bad for me, and SOOOO good. If we are going to be ascetic, to be intentional about what we eat, how we live, with consideration of religious tradition, etc., then let’s just do that. It’s sort of odd to swear off crappy food and secretly eat organic doughnuts. If you are gonna go off the plan, go big or go home. Seriously. But, there they are, the fair trade sourced, organic, no GMA, Agave sugared, artisan, stone ground floured doughnuts. They are still doughnuts, no matter how many socially acceptable adjectives you add to the name to try and hide what they are.
Make up your mind. Either be about it and eat doughnuts you got on a whim at the Sugar Shack or stick to the plan. Eating crap will kill you eventually. It’ll be a sweet & fat greased journey to an anonymous burial by the city when you show up in the morgue as a John/Jane Doe. . .
Oh, what!? “gender is a sliding scale, so a binary choice of either John or Jane is sexist“—leave me alone. I am ADHD enough all by myself. I don’t need help getting tempted away from the theme of a blog post.
Back to the theme—if you are gonna go wrong, do it well. Don’t half-ass it and buy your salty, fatty treats from a health food store. We all die some day anyway. Our only choice is how we walk the journey from mewling babe to babbling old fart to dust from which we came. And if you are going to make resolutions for the new year, do it. Accomplish the goal. It’s no good to make all those pretty sounding promises and face-plant in a plate of doughnut in April saying, “I’ll just eat one.” Drunks know this one, “I’ll just have one drink,” and wake up a year later in jail for losing a bar fight. Some of us cross a threshold from which there is no return. One doughnut is too many and a thousand doughnuts are not enough. No fair buying your apple cider doughnuts from Whole Foods, trying to play it off as vaguely healthy because all the ingredients come from socially acceptable sources. It’s still a doughnut you should not eat.
It’s a simple thing. When you make the resolution, stick to it. I am all about some degree of ascetic living. I live in ‘merica, which as of this moment, is probably the wealthiest, most disgustingly deadly sin accomplished country in the world right now. Nobody has more crap, more money, more self-righteous, self-entitled feeling pompous a**hats than us. Something like 2% of our wealthiest folk control over 90% of our nation’s wealth. If you have it like that you can have anything you want, anything. So, living on a little less, fasting from the amazing buffet of pleasures, products, and indulgences available for the swipe of a debit/credit card, is a good thing.
I’m old enough that the indulgences of my youth have caught up to me. I have diabetes. I can kill myself by gluttony. So, the choice to/not to be ascetic has been made for me by my past. I can’t just eat anything, drink anything, or behave any which way without damage to my health and safety. So, I’ve learned to love living on less. When I want doughnuts I go to Krispy Kreme or the Sugar Shack. I generally don’t shop at Whole Foods or other health food stores. But, that’s me. I don’t advocate others that live with me as an example. Except maybe a little more asceticism and a little less gluttony.
As you try and fail to honor your new year’s resolutions, remember this. After you are ash stories will be told about you. You have no option there. The option is which stories and what those stories will be. I hope they are that you lived an authentic life, be it as a “the seven deadly sins are my bucket list” bunch or as a member of a church. Don’t waffle or half-step. Go big or go home. Oh, and . . . just saying–salt caramel doughnuts from Sugar Shack. If you know, you know.