I’m no theologian, but I have my personal beliefs. I believe that we’re all born with a couple challenges before us. Two of these challenges take place on the spiritual plane: to learn to be kind to one another, and to be kind to ourselves. The other challenge, I feel, takes place on the physical plane: to realize that heaven is in everything we touch and perceive with our five senses, and to accept that most of the limitations and misery we face in life are only components of a drama without substance. If we could step away from the mortal stage and renounce Death as just one of the villains in the play, we would see that we’re already in the house of the Divine. Bearing this in mind, it’s my personal conviction that when we set out to abstain from the pleasures of this world, we are in fact spurning the things which the Divine has given us to enjoy.

There is much to say about Over-indulgence and addictions that take away from enjoying other things. If you’re obsessed with eating or enjoying cigarettes to the point that nothing else is worth experiencing without these things close at hand then you’re screwing yourself, and in essence already wallowing in the eternal damnation or state of nothingness you’ve conceived your soul worthy. But it is the other end of the spectrum here I am addressing –we are already plagued daily by warnings from the medical establishment about the dangers of this and that (remember, it’s the members of the AMA who ultimately benefit on our fear to treat our own bodies, and the fat-cat pharmaceuticals, which saturate television airways with commercials pimping their new drugs).

It is no longer acceptable to live your own life using what was once referred to as common sense. Common Sense and pleasure in moderation are concepts deemed too foolish for the average man or woman to rely on. So it has become the national pastime to overwhelm our daily consciousness with the latest findings issued by the medical establishment.

We are expected to let our authorities tell us if any enjoyment is safe and sensible or not. You enjoy drinking coffee? Then be sure to only drink as many cups as deemed safe by your physician. Do you enjoy eating? To prevent certain potential cancers then you darned well better make sure you follow precisely the recommended daily allowance from every food group as revised incessantly by the FDA. This mighty branch of the federal government may deny ever taking pork barrel from the various food industries; but isn’t it surprising how very often the daily requirements of chicken, pork, bread, veggies and fruit are shuffled around on that ole Food Pyramid? These revisions may, ironically, contradict the present medical concern over obesity as well. Calling a fat person fat is a PC taboo nowadays, so where once common sense may have compelled sentiments such as “If you want to lose weight just push away from the table,” we are required to accept obesity as a disease. (I suppose this is a very healthy attitude for the makers of diet pills and publishers of bestselling diet books.. and of course surgeons who pay for their BMW’s by keeping up on the latest Gastro-Bypass procedures). Do you like cigarettes? Well, forget it- they’re going to kill you, and the second hand smoke will snuff out your loved ones, too. While our world may survive the after effects of countless atomic and nuclear bomb testings, and we carry on our daily routines despite the carbon monoxide fumes from hundreds of thousands of gas-guzzling vehicles that ride our highways every day, we might as well crawl into the jaws of a hungry, rabid lion as to light up a cigarette. So what if Christopher Reeves’ widow died of lung cancer without even being a smoker? We can’t all expect to be so unlucky or fortunate.. whichever way we choose to see it.

And finally, for every vice the medical establishment doesn’t claim to have the last word on, we have the tried and true discretion of the religious Right. So if you’re thinking of having pre-marital sex you’d damned well better forget that. According to the temperate-minded sexually transmitted diseases are God’s punishment on humanity for fornication, adultery and every other form of sensuous pleasure the devil panders.

These sacrosanct and modern “enlightened” opinions about vice remind me of the line of bull the doctor and minister offered when a certain family member died. The doctor said never mind that he lived to be a hundred and four years old, made his own moonshine and had smoked every day of his life since the tender year of fifteen. The man ended up dead, and the most tragic part- possibly preventively dead, as he’d not agreed to this doctor’s series of advised tests. He’d had no health problems anyone knew about, but still, this doctor assured that had the old gentleman come to the hospital and submitted to the tests, whatever eventually killed him may have been detected long before he ended up dying in the comfort of his own bed. Besides, our minister contended, he had liked sex way too much what with that pretty young thing he married. Heck, without the whiskey, nicotine and sex he might have seen his one hundredth and fifth birthday- maybe without the bouncing baby boy that brought him such joy that last year of his life, but well on his way to an eternal reward with a sober, repentant expression on his face instead of that big grin the mortician found impossible to remove.

© 2007 by Desiree Erotique
All rights reserved.