Friday, April 25, 2008

so many choices...



Donald's recent post got me thinking about this issue.

Here's what I don't quite understand, generally speaking why do we do things that we know are bad for us?

We smoke, we eat poorly, we don't exercise, we drive drunk, we cross without looking both ways...some of those bad decisions, when made in moderation, are entirely manageable, some become unmanageable the moment we start making them.

I think we put too much pressure on ourselves to be good all the time, and then we're stressed out when we make an inevitable mistake, and then we let it all go to shit.

The issue then becomes not so much about eating a 540 calorie Big Mac, but about the disconnect between our American belief that we can achieve perfection and the multitude of choices made available to us that make achieving that belief, which we think is part and parcel of being American, available to us...and also totally impossible.

Glad I solved that problem. Off to deal with the Middle East now.

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