Abundance - Love - Feb 14

Abundance — Love — Feb 14

Each week on “Abundance” we celebrate one of the 1001 things I’m thankful for from my list of 1001Thanks. This week #620, Love is our topic. Some people say “Love makes the world go round” and “Love means never having to say you’re sorry”. Two thousand years ago, the Roman poet Virgil said, “Love conquers all things.” Let’s conquer this next hour together considering what love can and cannot do.

Our episodes today include: Love is Green, Who is the Master?, In Love With Being Alive, Junk Food Junkie, and you’ll hear that classic tale, "The Lady or the Tiger?" by Frank Stockton, and Lord Byron’s poem "She Walks in Beauty" and we may even have time to hear "The Bait" by John Donne.

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Junk Food Junkie

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Junk Food Junkie

I love food. My wife doesn’t really get how much I like being able to buy any kind of food I want and eat it anytime I want. She always tells me I should spend the money on clothes or knick-knacks. But that is where she gets her satisfaction, from being able to afford nice clothes and other things she wants. I just like to eat.

I’m not sure why I like buying food so much. It must be the consumer in me. I really don’t like to fix my own food and eat it. It would make a lot more sense to make my own food because then I could eat even more food.

But there is only so much food one person can eat, and I’m not sure why I like prepared food better. I think it must just be junk food that I like the best. When I was small, I loved to go to the convenience store and buy candy and pop. I finagled for every penny I could get; cashing pop bottles, selling off stuff I didn’t want any more to neighborhood kids, and even charging them to look through my telescope. My favorite part of the week was when I had enough to go buy something and eat it.

I could have saved up money and bought something to keep, but I just love to buy something and eat it. I think it makes me feel rich. If I can spend money on something like junk food, I must be rich.

There really are only three or four categories of junk food I really crave. I think I could eat potato chips every meal if my health would allow it. A real treat for me is a bag of Lay’s Potato Chips – the real ones, not the baked ones. The greasier my fingers get the better I feel. The saltier my mouth gets the more I like it. Once my face is puckered up from the salty greasiness, I really like to chase those lovely chips down with some kind of carbonated drink, especially Pepsi, or ideally Wild Cherry Pepsi. I used to drink the diet stuff, but now I’m back on full sugar dosage at every drink. It really doesn’t seem to make a difference in my weight, and the great satisfaction that sugar rush gives me is really worth more than I pay. But don’t tell the companies.

I think there really is a plan behind the management of my junk food eating habits. I even read a book decades ago which predicted just this kind of corporate manipulation of my tastes. The title of the book I can’t even remember, but I do remember the pattern the book talked about. Get the customer to eat something salty, then something sugary, and then something salty again. Sounds like my daily routine, doesn’t it.

I really don’t believe there is a conspiracy out there to get me to each chips and drink pop, but I there is, it is certainly working. I don’t mind admitting I’m a willing participant, and I really don’t think I’ll be changing my snacking habits any time soon. But I have cut back and I think the real reason I like fast food and junk food is not just that it easy and available, but I think I use these tasty treats as a reward for myself.

These little rewards are a strange thing. They really don’t amount to much, but I have found if I do those things I know I need to do each day, and then reward myself with a little treat, I feel better. Then I want to do more of those things I know I need to do, and another little reward greases the wheel again. It’s an automatic feedback loop which has worked very well for me, and I don’t plan to change the way I get things done anytime soon.

The simple things in life seem to me to be some of the most satisfying. Seeing a sunrise or a sunset, accomplishing the little things that need to get done so the big things also get done, and rewarding that good behavior with a bag of chips might seem like a simplistic approach to life. But I like it and encourage you to do the same. Looking to the future, I can see a happy group of over-achievers eagerly munching junk food as the progress of the world is measured in chips and pop. It seems like a simple solution to encourage all of us to do that little bit more which makes all the difference in the world. We may be a bag of potato chips and a soft drink away from solving your most important problem.

Long live junk food!!