Under the Influence

We’re endlessly looking at how others do things, for inspiration and ideas … but we end up wanting to try those things too. That sounds harmless until you realize that you’ll buy almost anything because someone wrote about it and made it sound amazing. You’ll live a life of an endless series of purchases because of what other people are doing. And it never ends.

Even if you don’t buy stuff, you’ll change your life endlessly, based on what others are doing. You’ll give up your couch, you’ll stop buying Ikea furniture, then give up your cell phone, then give up your computer, then start doing yoga, then become a Zen monk, then create a tech startup. Those things are amazing, sure … but when does it ever end?

When do we ever feel content with the life we’re living?

I don't know, but blogger Leo Babauta asks a relevant question, and one that's been on my mind this week of exorcising demons of sweetness from my life. It comes down to an acute case of diet confusion. In a sense, diet, food, takes the place of religion in my life. I mean that. It provides a sense of structure, a group of commandments with an implicit understanding that if I follow them I'll be saved from obesity, cancer, lethargy, depression. It fills the ethics hole as well--eating plant-based, though not 100% cruelty-free, feels that way, has been touted as better for the health of the planet, too. Combine this with philosophical and political undercurrents against the trend of big-business patenting of DNA codes and exploitation of animal and human life and I have a Way of Life as opposed to a means of keeping the body alive.

Most certainly way back when, when humans were new to this game of eating, we ate whatever didn't kill us too quickly and whenever we could. So now I read so many disparate sources about how our diet reflects or doesn't our evolutionary needs, how certain ways of eating can cause our cells to resonate at higher frequencies (whatever that means), can stoke our inner digestive fire or leave food to coldly rot in the gut. I've been a diet whore, acting similarly to the way described above. I tried the Atkins and South Beach diets about 15 years ago when I was significantly overweight and depressed. I lost some weight but felt heavy and slow nonetheless. I gave it up. Went back to eating whatever and remained overweight and depressed for a few more years. I joined Oprah and Bob Green next and gave up the white stuff: sugar and starch. I ate lean meat and vegetables, few grains. Lost a LOT of weight. Started practicing yoga and riding a bike. Lost a lot more weight. Felt good. Happy. Holy Grail? I dunno. From there I refined my eating further by giving up meat. Still felt good. Happy. Even better, I felt a sense of purpose. I began to care about pesticides both for their effect on my body and on the planet. And though I'm a skeptic by nature, I have to admit that these beliefs still hold, whether they are ultimately true or not. I'm pretty sure they don't make me a better person. Occasionally I still feel a twinge of moral superiority, but not as frequently. Especially when I've seen how easy it is to get lured in by the white stuff again. (By the way, day 4 and enjoying a distinct lack of craving and persistent thoughts about my next snack.)

It's gotten a little too complicated, though. I'm ready to take it down a notch. Simplify. I'm tired of looking to experts and wondering if the diet is greener on the other side of the fence. Simplify. I'm gonna stick with this no sugar place I'm in and try to rely on my own experience to find a good sustaining balance. Simplify. That's all.

I want to end this post by sharing a stanza of Billy Collins' Thieves. Funny, when I toggled to Amazon to create the hyper-link an ad for the Kindle came up and my gut reaction was both a feeling and the thought that I gotta get me one of those. Maybe the best we can do is pray for our daily patience and then some to have a little space between us and all the influences, space in which to feel a little  contentment with the life we're living. I've read and re-read this poem recently. This stanza makes me laugh, sigh, gives me a sense of urgency, a nagging reminder about clocks and schedules, the thrill of breaking taboo to steal a moment to do nothing but sit on a rock and watch, a thirst for and a tiredness of the long song of life that ends too soon:

Give us this day our daily clock

I started to chant

as I sat on the hood of this Volkswagen of stone,

and give us our daily blood

and our daily patience and some extra patience

until we cannot stand to live any longer.