Live Now, Pay Later

1946:

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. Older people 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, 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.

         

I can remember starting out in adult life eager to experience abundance and effortless, sensory experiences. But as I got older, and taking all this for granted, I tried to recapture some of the pleasures of the past, only to find that that sort of pleasure required some investment. And as age creeps on and our health and strength isn’t as robust, 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, health and strength 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 every possible advantage. Access to pleasure is important. Food is one of the great pleasures.

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 people are starving, and have no prospect of finding food.

         

Here in the West, we are so privileged and have such opportunities to live life NOW, that we forget about the need to pursue ‘the greater good’. Something vital is spoiled in us because of that, for living an indulgent lifestyle.