Why is it that when you're trying to lose weight, as I am, that you're frequently told "you should eat to live and not live to eat"? Pardon me for saying so, but that's just fucking stupid. Food is a biological necessity; we must eat or we'll die. For that reason, I think that we're meant to enjoy food. Seriously, how many things that you HAVE to do actually give pleasure?
Our biological necessities are pretty basic, and they're covered well in Maslow's pyramid, so I'm not going to ponder all of them, but I'm thinking of a few.
First off, we need to breathe oxygen. That's a biological imperitive that we don't even actually have to think about; we do it automatically. There's not much of a sensual payoff, unless you're doing deep breathing exercises for yoga, meditation, or something like that.
Second, we need water. Can't survive long without it. Of course we don't only drink water. We drink milk, juice, soda, coffee, tea, and various and sundry other things including my favorite subcategory of water: Alcoholic beverages. Depending on what you're drinking and why, there's definite pleasure to be had there.
Third, we need food. For our personal survival, food is the one necessity that can give us the most pleasure. I've given up a lot of things in my time, smoking being prime on that list, but I've also given up drinking alcoholic beverages to excess, and I don't do drugs. In my line of work, there's a heading for those items. It's called social history, and there's more to it than that, including marital status and living situation, etc., but tobacco use, alcohol abuse, and drug use/abuse are the big 3 there. No matter what I give up to be healthy, food can't be one of those things, because starving to death is hardly a healthy habit.
For years, and maybe forever, food has been/is my drug of choice. And even if I had never had a weight problem, I'd still have to eat, right? I might as well enjoy it. I'm not a Christian; and I don't believe for one minute in the Creation theory, but I do think that we find pleasure in food because we need it. Some of the things that we have to do to survive, both indivually and collectively as a species, are supposed to feel good to us to encourage us to do what needs to be done.
Which brings me to our final biological necessity. To ensure survival of the species, we have to make more people. And sperm donation, egg donation, IVF, GIF, ZIF, and surrogacy aside, most babies are still made the old fashioned, least expensive, and (hopefully) most fun way. You individually may not need to have sex, but as a whole, sex is a necessity. And because it's a necessity, it's supposed to feel good. (And when I say sex, I mean consensual sex, preferably with someone you care about). I also think that we're meant to masturbate. If we weren't meant to touch ourselves, our arms would be shorter. They'd be still long enough to reach our mouths to feed ourselves, but too short to touch our genitalia without some serious contortion.
Think about that for a while. I'm going to go eat something while I live to eat and eat to live at the same time.
CURRENTLY READING: I'm not reading anything right now. None of my books that are waiting to be read have called my name lately.
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