I�ve come up with another back-up reason to stop drinking. Not that I don�t have enough good reasons, but they all kind of lean on each other, like a card house. When one falls, they all fall, and leave me staring into the cold sky (or worse, a cold Skyy).

This is a different kind of reason. It�s the idea that it is worthwhile to do something difficult for the sake of doing it. I started thinking about it while reading a book called �The Philosopher�s Diet.� The diet advice is overzealous but the philosophy aspect is interesting. The author is Richard Watson, a philosophy professor at Washington University in St. Louis. He suggests that if health reasons and environmental/world-hunger guilt aren�t enough to convince you to eat less, you should consider your diet a philosophical exercise:

�What is important at this point is not your diet, but your commitment to it. People can�t know what a project of exerting willpower is like nor what it leads to until they commit themselves. At this point it is not the content of your act that counts, but that it is a difficult and long-term project freely chosen; not the seeming silliness of working so hard on such an ultimately minor matter, but how damnably hard it is to do, and that you manage to do it; not the content, but the form of the thing. For if you can do this, you can complete other difficult projects, the content of which may be far from minor.�

The idea of doing something difficult for the purpose of self-improvement is one I would have rejected as the ultimate in bullshit a year ago. Now it appeals to me. Drinking took up all my energy and made side projects unrealistic. Now I can do anything. I feel like I�m surrounded by an aura of unfocused energy waiting for a target. I�m anxious to use my powers for good.

prev // next