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What About This…? 1.16.2014

By Wayne William Cipriano

After packing on a few holiday pounds don’t we become very sensitive to all those early morning and non-network television programs that feature healthy meals? These meals are so low in caloric value that one could actually starve to death eating as many of them as one could possibly swallow. Unfortunately, as these meals often rely on a base of twigs and sage grass, they usually taste like… twigs and sage grass.

Fortunately, those same programs give us an effective response to our adding “just a hint” of things to “brighten up” the flavor of such meals like black pepper, paprika, and pancakes drenched in butter and syrup. That response: EXERCISE!

So, to eat what we should not, in quantities that would astound any moderately successful third-world inhabitant, and then avoid the heart attack that tracks all of us during our lives, we force ourselves to run in place on treadmills wearing headbands and spandex (that last part is okay, though) courting another type of heart attack – more socially acceptable but equally lethal. And, we do that so we can, what, eat more twigs and sage grass smothered in pancakes, butter and syrup? Who among us has the fortitude to escape such a cycle?

But, from another perspective, consider this: How great is it to win the birth lottery and be born into a situation in which the actual ease of our lifestyles and the depth of our affluence is killing us?

Do you think that, say 75 or 100 years ago a citizen of our “First World” found a magic lamp, rubbed it, and made what that First Worlder thought was an altruistic wish for those of us who would follow: That from thence onward none of us would be haunted by the vampire of want? And did that djinn in the lamp, as have all djinns throughout history grant the wish in such a way that today we are all affluencing ourselves to death?