Wednesday 12 July 2006

Pic of the day: Elementary school kids sure are fast these days! But on the bright side, you can work up quite an appetite chasing them. Not that I would know.

Right action, wrong reason

I'm gaining weight faster than any time in my life, it seems. I still have some way left before I am back to the levels from while I could eat fat, but then again it may not be a good idea to return to my normal weight. Not with two parents with late-onset diabetes. But the thing is, I really like to eat. So, I started thinking: If I exercise more, then I can eat more!

To keep your body running optimally, you should move about briskly for half an hour a day, or an hour every other day. (Shorter bursts of activity than 25 minutes or so don't seem to trigger the same effects.) You can do more than that too, but the benefits will taper off quickly. So unless you enjoy it, running at breakneck speed for hours is a bad idea. But I would imagine you could eat like a starved horse if you ran that much... But that's just an example. Don't we humans do this a lot? Come up with a good thing but for a wrong reason.

When I was much younger than today, I went to a school far from home. I made friends among certain Christians in the area, and one such family had several young children, among them a girl. She was a a likable enough girl, and I thought we were friends. It was my intention to return to that school for another year, for which I easily qualified. But after this became known, a mutual friend contacted me. There seemed to be a worry that I would be going to the school in order to be around this girl, and she would not want to give me any hopes in that regard. I think my stunned expression convinced him more than my words. I had not even considered that people might do that, take an education they don't want in order to be close to someone. Of course, to me knowledge is like a bride, keeping me awake at night with unquenchable longing, or something. But I suppose ordinary humans might actually do things like what our friend asked. I mean, it is not very different from running in order to eat.

There is perhaps no limit to how far one can go in this direction. I then imagined a man who is attracted to children in an impure way, and who therefore decides to become a teacher. As a teacher he will have a good reason to surround himself with children day after day, and observe them when they are at their most natural and unrestrained. Of course, our imaginary teacher has no intention of ever molesting a child, just like most other men have no intention of doing so with a woman. This does not keep most men from looking, and we can expect no better from our deviant friend here. So, his motives are dubious at the best of times, but he does not reveal those. He then proceeds to complete his education and become a quite capable teacher, who with his keen interest in the individual child is eminently suited to help them learn and grow. What he does is good, even though he himself is not, by most of our reckoning.

(I'm not thinking of anyone in particular here. It was just the most extreme example I could think of, offhand.)

***

At this point I thought about guilt-based and shame-based societies, and how they would probably have a different attitude to this. But I think now that it may not be that clear-cut. Probably in every society there are different opinions. In fact, I think even I myself have different opinions on this. Does it really matter why we do something, as long as we do it right?

Yes, I think it does matter. Our motives are not our deepest layer. They are in turn symptoms or signs of what lives even deeper within. Whether it is gluttony or indecency or many other such "sins" (as we Christians call them), they don't just rise up from dark and secret places that no one can explore. No, they have roots. These are instincts (or the human equivalent of those, drives and inclinations) that are out of balance. It is natural to eat, and it is natural to mate for most people, each thing at its proper time and place. But sometimes a desire gets too strong or is deflected in a direction where it might do harm, either to oneself or another.

If we think "it does not matter, as long as I do the right thing", then we may turn our eyes away and only concentrate on the surface. But if we look deeper, we may begin to notice the dark strong undercurrents in our life. And then we can begin to decide, begin to plan, begin to think about what we really want. Is this really the best way to go about it? I can ask.

Perhaps there is food I can eat that is cheaper and yet more filling (veggies, anyone?) so I can eat as much as I want without having to run up and down hills more than I normally do. And perhaps there are ways for those other people too to live with their desires. Or perhaps the answer is to gradually diminish our desires, by becoming more aware and realizing what is truly important in life. In any case, living a double life will probably not help us with this.

So I think honesty is the strongest tool. But not all may be able to wield it. Who am I to judge? After all, I was the one who came up with the harebrained scheme in the first place, of exercising to eat more. And I might even have gone through with it, says the quiet voice in my head, if I hadn't been so lazy...