Friday, September 12, 2008

What We Stand to Lose

Steering ourselves away from anti-life practices (also known in spiritual communities as 'sin') is about maintaining and enriching what we cherish, possess and are enabled to do.

Regularly stuffing ourselves full with crap-loads of meat, carbs and sweets translates to incapacity. We lose the ability to:

  • appeciate healthy eating (when fruits, vegetables and nuts - the healthiest foods in the world - seem 'inferior' and yucky) i.e. we stop cherishing goodness
  • move around with properly digested food and a high-quality stomach ("take care of your stomach for the first 40 years, and it'll take care of you for the next 40") i.e. we no longer possess good 'parts'
  • control our craving (and thus think clearly) i.e. we no longer possess 'ourselves' (in a sense)
  • perform with a clear mind (with all that blood pushed from brain to guts, and loads of energy lost in malfunctioning digestion) i.e. we no longer enabled, period.

And this is just gluttony. Probably the least attended to vice (if at all thought of as such, especially in Asia).

Maybe we need a more loss-oriented view of the things God has told us to avoid.

What do we lose from promoting blame, mockery and ridicule in politics? What of us is decapitated when we sexually objectify of others? What do we give up when we can't keep quiet about our own achievements and let others talk for a second?

Forget hell after death. Hell on earth is what'll kill us.

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