You just can’t win!

1647: 

If vanity is the big trap in life, you’d think, after some decades of life, we’d have learnt about it and stopped ‘doing’ it. All I’m saying here is that for older people, who could be setting an example for the young, if they want to avoid neuroses concerning their lost youth and missed opportunities, they might need to stop running up their ‘vanity debts’. We should get used to paying-back as we go along, doing without some things, exercising a little self-restraint and add a touch of responsibility-taking. If we don’t go that way then we risk not being able to restore balance later in life, and then it all ends in tears.

I can remember starting out in adult life eager to experience abundance and enjoy effortless, sensory experiences. But as I got older, and taking all this for granted, I tried to recapture some of the pleasure of past years, only to find that that pleasure required a whole lot more investment. Was I losing my capacity for pursuing pleasure?

As age creeps on and our health goes and then our strength, we have to more careful to measure what we do - we no longer run just for fun. Our body creaks so much that we can’t even run for a bus! If you speak with very old people they’ll say how important it is to ‘keep your health’, because once lost it’s very hard to get it back. For them, so they say, there’s pain every day. Whereas younger people don’t get much body pain and whenever they do it doesn't seem so serious - health isn’t such a big issue because they haven’t experienced it deteriorating yet. But they do know that good health and good looks go together, and energy, sexuality and a slim, athletic body are a main source of pleasure, and this somewhat pulls them into line. But up against this there’s a powerful need to extract everything possible from life.

On an everyday basis we try to excite the taste buds and satisfy food cravings. So here, on these familiar battle grounds, we tear ourselves apart, torn between pleasure and good sense, stuffing our faces with good-tasting but body-destroying foods. And it becomes such an all-consuming occupation that we forget that the rest of the world is going on around us, with many starving.

Here in the West, we are so privileged and have such opportunities to live life NOW, and that’s just great! But in the process we forget about the need to contribute towards ‘the greater good’. It’s a shame about that because something vital is spoiled in us because we forget about this. And then, we deserve to be criticised for living an indulgent lifestyle.

Huh! You just can’t win. But was it ever just about winning?