I am no paragon of virtue.
There are too many people who can blackmail me about my life for me to run about as if I am a flawless saint with not a trace of scandal in my past.
Each of those indescretions, be they great or small, has exacted a price. Sometimes a price that was most painful to pay and which took a great deal of suffering to complete.
Patient people who love me have been compelled by the force of my actions to wade through the quicksand of the reality I have created in order to see me through to the salvation waiting on the solid ground of the other side.
It hasn't been easy for them or me.
Michael Phelps is the lastest casualty in the war between what we know to be right and the little tempter within who makes everything seem like it's no big deal.
The tempter's voice whispers that 'you are special and the rules don't apply the same for you'. It whispers of consequence eluded and lame apologies accepted with no further ado. Carefully, the tempter makes it seem so slick and so well packaged that something which would have made you shrink in horror mere months earlier now appears to be 'no big deal' - except that it is.
Which the tempter knew full well all along. Now, he laughs.
Many people who are picking up the shards of glass from their own houses, are tossing stones like there is no tomorrow. Get right with yourselves on this one people, just because his particular 'flavor' of sin wasn't your 'flavor' doesn't make yours appear more lily white. Nor does it make the hue of black on his sin darker because you didn't do it, too.
We mere mortals make stupid mistakes, create dumb choices with painful consequences and hurt people around us in an ever-increasing quest for self-gratification. What we don't want within this process is accountability.
The very word accountability reminds me of some prissy, glasses wearing, starched shirt, bean counting dweeb who is a total square.
But that is exactly what we freewheeling sinners need - the steadying presence of one who doesn't call it a day until all the checks and balances have toted up. Someone who says, "You can't have this 'positive' without creating a 'negative' somewhere."
Michael Phelps is starting the accountability phase. Endorsements from Kellogg's are gone. Children do NOT need bong smoking, pot huffing poster boys. And it doesn't make me, a fellow sinner, a hypocrit for saying so.
He DESERVES the three-months long suspension from the swimming authorities who govern his sport.
I can't say whether he deserves more or less. I have been extended unexpected mercy too many times when what I truly deserved was the justice I had earned. While not yet perfect and still learning about what 'accountable' means, I hope I am learning.
What remains to be seen is whether Mr. Phelps will learn from this mistake. There are children who idolize him. Which begs the question - why do we idolize mortals who are guaranteed to let us down horribly, time after time? Do we idolize them because we secretly believe they are somehow better than us or stronger or more perfect?
We have the same price in our daily lives in the friends we choose, the actions we perform and the stupidity that we level onto the world.
The truth is that somewhere, sometime the check has to be paid. The dancing and singing of the piper can't last forever.
Like the people of Hamlin so long ago who wanted a reduction of problems and difficulties with no accountability, eventually the price they paid was most dear indeed.
What we should all do is when the first bright notes of the piper sound in our ears is to decide then and there that we will not be caught by the siren song of the slick and well packaged lures he dangles before us.
Some decisions need to be made only one time.
I think that this one qualifies.
If only we could all learn that lesson for our own 'flavor' of sin. We might be less bankrupt emotionally and more rich spiritually.
February 9, 2009
February 8, 2009
All Natural or Not
I have noticed that labels scarcely tell eaters the truth.
Instead of saying 'this muffin is nothing but processed flour, lard and a ton of white sugar guaranteed to jack up your blood sugar level to "coma" within 10 minutes', the label casually disguises the truth in vague terms which would confuse most educated people.
The muffin is a single muffin in a little decorated plastic bag.
One would think that one muffin is for one person.
But...if you look at the sinister label, the minute giblety writing on the tiny nutrition facts section tells an entirely different story.
The label says the muffin in said package is one which serves 2.5 people.
Do what???
Does that mean I can cut it up into 2.5 servings and share? NOT WITH MY MUFFIN, DUDE! Get your mitts off and buy your own! Muffin money is rare and not to be used to buy muffins for trifling people who didn't plan ahead with their own allowances and found money.
I am left to ponder why ONE muffin should serve more than one person at all.
In the first place, who truly wants half a muffin with a thumbprint on the top and a ragged crumbly edge which is guaranteed to leave that freshly ironed shirt looking like you slept on a bed of cornflakes while wearing it the night before.
And in the second place, anyone who would be willing to take said raggedly torn muffin must know you well enough to know that you should have bought carrot sticks instead.
Then, we are left with the horrible thought of just who the half a person is who gets the remaining particle of muffin.
Did they get run over by a train while napping on the tracks and become bisected in some odd sci-fi moment that allows them to live with only half a body? Half a head...less teeth to floss... half a chest, if they are female there will be a lot of questions when it's time to buy a new bra... one shoe...thrift stores can help there, they always seem to have an ample supply of odd shoes.
In any case, do we really want to watch someone with half a mouth chew up their muffin?
I digress.
Back to the naturalness of the muffin.
If you have to tell me in chemical terms what I am eating, I am much more inclined to believe my food to be a by-product of Dr. Frankenstein's lunch experimentation. Just what was Igor doing with that jar of pickles and that power strip?
Why can't food just say the truth: "I am horrible for your diet, I will load 10 pounds upon your already burdened frame and I taste better than manna in the wilderness to a starving man."
Or better yet, "Just like the incredible, fluffy, homemade 3-layer cakes that Sister Brown made at church socials, I have NO calories and NO after effects!" (yeah, I wish...*sigh* those days are gone...).
Instead, our food has gone 'Hollywood' and now uses flashy and revealing packaging to disguise the truth. Even Twinkies have been compelled to 'go light'. How sad.
Back years ago, there was this naturalist dude on TV advertising a cereal product called "Grape Nuts" which had nothing to do with grapes and everything to do with gross. It was the cereal old people ate. It was touted as being an all natural product that was 'healthy' and apparently reminded their spokesman, Euell Gibbons, of eating the seeds and bark from some tree in the mountains.
I have to say the ads themselves were fodder for comic acts and snarky remarks among the younger set to whom digestive complaints were not yet reality. I mean who wanted all natural when it tasted so bad?
No amount of sugar made Grape Nuts palatable. No amount of added fruit made the cardboard taste disappear. For better or worse, the all natural claims of Grape Nuts simple made young people gag and old people regular.
I realize truth is at a premium now, moreso than at any other time in our history. Everything has an angle, people can "spin it" to mean whatever they should have said when they weren't
shooting their mouth off saying something entirely different.
But adding the words "all natural" to something that is disgusting only fools the nuts...and we ain't talking Grape Nuts here... people who believe that everything must be tagged as a natural product in order to sell have forgotten the best truth of all.
We are, ourselves, no longer 'all natural'. We enhance our beauty and appeal with scents and lotions, potions and pills guaranteed by some faceless person to make us something that we aren't.
Oh. I get it now.
Our food has just started to match us. "All Natural".
Run now...while there is still time.
Instead of saying 'this muffin is nothing but processed flour, lard and a ton of white sugar guaranteed to jack up your blood sugar level to "coma" within 10 minutes', the label casually disguises the truth in vague terms which would confuse most educated people.
The muffin is a single muffin in a little decorated plastic bag.
One would think that one muffin is for one person.
But...if you look at the sinister label, the minute giblety writing on the tiny nutrition facts section tells an entirely different story.
The label says the muffin in said package is one which serves 2.5 people.
Do what???
Does that mean I can cut it up into 2.5 servings and share? NOT WITH MY MUFFIN, DUDE! Get your mitts off and buy your own! Muffin money is rare and not to be used to buy muffins for trifling people who didn't plan ahead with their own allowances and found money.
I am left to ponder why ONE muffin should serve more than one person at all.
In the first place, who truly wants half a muffin with a thumbprint on the top and a ragged crumbly edge which is guaranteed to leave that freshly ironed shirt looking like you slept on a bed of cornflakes while wearing it the night before.
And in the second place, anyone who would be willing to take said raggedly torn muffin must know you well enough to know that you should have bought carrot sticks instead.
Then, we are left with the horrible thought of just who the half a person is who gets the remaining particle of muffin.
Did they get run over by a train while napping on the tracks and become bisected in some odd sci-fi moment that allows them to live with only half a body? Half a head...less teeth to floss... half a chest, if they are female there will be a lot of questions when it's time to buy a new bra... one shoe...thrift stores can help there, they always seem to have an ample supply of odd shoes.
In any case, do we really want to watch someone with half a mouth chew up their muffin?
I digress.
Back to the naturalness of the muffin.
If you have to tell me in chemical terms what I am eating, I am much more inclined to believe my food to be a by-product of Dr. Frankenstein's lunch experimentation. Just what was Igor doing with that jar of pickles and that power strip?
Why can't food just say the truth: "I am horrible for your diet, I will load 10 pounds upon your already burdened frame and I taste better than manna in the wilderness to a starving man."
Or better yet, "Just like the incredible, fluffy, homemade 3-layer cakes that Sister Brown made at church socials, I have NO calories and NO after effects!" (yeah, I wish...*sigh* those days are gone...).
Instead, our food has gone 'Hollywood' and now uses flashy and revealing packaging to disguise the truth. Even Twinkies have been compelled to 'go light'. How sad.
Back years ago, there was this naturalist dude on TV advertising a cereal product called "Grape Nuts" which had nothing to do with grapes and everything to do with gross. It was the cereal old people ate. It was touted as being an all natural product that was 'healthy' and apparently reminded their spokesman, Euell Gibbons, of eating the seeds and bark from some tree in the mountains.
I have to say the ads themselves were fodder for comic acts and snarky remarks among the younger set to whom digestive complaints were not yet reality. I mean who wanted all natural when it tasted so bad?
No amount of sugar made Grape Nuts palatable. No amount of added fruit made the cardboard taste disappear. For better or worse, the all natural claims of Grape Nuts simple made young people gag and old people regular.
I realize truth is at a premium now, moreso than at any other time in our history. Everything has an angle, people can "spin it" to mean whatever they should have said when they weren't
shooting their mouth off saying something entirely different.
But adding the words "all natural" to something that is disgusting only fools the nuts...and we ain't talking Grape Nuts here... people who believe that everything must be tagged as a natural product in order to sell have forgotten the best truth of all.
We are, ourselves, no longer 'all natural'. We enhance our beauty and appeal with scents and lotions, potions and pills guaranteed by some faceless person to make us something that we aren't.
Oh. I get it now.
Our food has just started to match us. "All Natural".
Run now...while there is still time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)