You just can't win!

1857:

If vanity is the big trap in life, you’d think after some decades of life we’d learn about it and stop ‘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 spend less time in the mirror and 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 plus 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 ending in tears. Not our own tears but those of the many animals we destroy to satisfy this ‘me-looking’.

         

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 more investment. I was losing my capacity for pursuing it. And as age creeps on and our health goes and then our strength, we have to measure what we do - we no longer run just for fun. Our body creaks so much 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 isn’t so ominous - health isn’t an issue because they haven’t lost it yet. But they do know that good health and good looks go together, and energy, sexuality and a slim, athletic body also go together, and this somewhat pulls them into line. But up against this there’s a powerful need to extract from life everything possible.

         

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. Many are starving.

         

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

         

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