The Joys of Moderation

A wise man told me earlier this week, "You're 24. Start acting like you're 24!" Blunt but true. So now I'm learning to control my emotions a little better, talk less, take stricter command of my finances...and learn a valuable lesson about pleasures in moderation.

Ever since preschool, one of the simplest and best joys in my life was reading a book while eating. But over the years, the following things happened...my love of literature grew to a point where I learned the best way for me to read a book and extract the most riches in thought and sentiment from it, while thanks to my mother and friends, the latter an ever-growing group, I discovered the joys of savoring your food as slowly as possible and in cooking and taking communal meals.

Tonight, I had a bowl of chili to eat on my lonesome and I pulled out Jane Smiley's 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel for company, and I was not fully enjoying the experience until the neurons in my head sent me a message: my ability to gain pleasure from reading and my ability to gain pleasure through sensible eating had both evolved so fully that I could no longer appreciate them in combination! They needed their own space!

For the first time in twenty years, I have lost all desire to read while eating.

I wish I had arrived at this point sooner, remembering all the years in high school and college sitting alone with a book or feeling ticked off when I had to eat with others. But I am becoming my best self in my own timeframe, and I think I've got a good half-century to catch up on all the human connection I may have missed.

The catch is that I have come to greatly enjoy reading and drinking. Coffee, tea, beer, wine, and diet soda are all flavorful enough to be greatly pleasurable, but simple and less space-taking enough to be enjoyed in tandem with a good book! So from now on, reading while drinking (though not to the point of alcoholism) is the way to go, and reading while eating is a closed chapter, pun intended.

By the way, the Russians are driving me crazy these days. It is not prejudicial for someone to make objective claims about your conduct in World War II! I'm happy you won as much as you are! I just wish you hadn't killed million upon millions of dissenters from Stalin's hard line in the process!