There are two ways of thinking about what I did last night.
The first is to say that, if I'm on a weightloss wagon, I calmly pulled on the reins, got down to the floor, unhooked a keg of gasoline, sprinkled it liberally around the place, lit the cart on fire, then walked up and punched the horse in the face, just Because.
The second is to invoke Aristotle.
So, Aristotle - for the newbies - said that the path to self-control did not consist in doing what I've been doing since I started this experiment (avoiding all temptation, and thus achieving good results). Aristotle - who I've long suspected was one of those sneering gits you find at dinner parties, telling the life story of the cheese - has it that to achieve true self-mastery, what you have to do is periodically, as the occasion or desire demands it, indulge your temptations, and enjoy them to what he describes as 'the appropriate degree', and then climb back on your wagon of self-denial and self-mastery as though nothing had happened.
This has never been a mindset with which I've had any truck. When I've wanted something, I've wanted lots and lots and lots of it, inhaled without thought, without reason, without even explicit enjoyment, until the urge to have it was temporarily 'sated'. This, I think, it the nature of addiction - moderation has no interest, and indeed you feel it in your bones and your belly that moderation is for pussies, for those who are only half-alive, for bankers. Moderation is not the way of Real Men or Real Women, you feel, and if a thing is worth doing it's worth doing right off the edge of the fucking cliff, and then doing some more till you're suspended, cartoon-like, in mid-air and then plunge irrevocably to your doom.
This was my mode of day-to-day living for the first forty years of my life - which perhaps explains why, at 30, I didn't expect to actually see forty years of life.
Not surprisingly, Aristotle's challenge pissed me off from the moment I read it, back in October last year.
It pissed me off that Mr Historic Philosopher could sit there, thousands of years dead and go "Hmm...very well done and all that, but it's not a real achievement till you can dip your toe in and go on..."
Prick.
Anyhow, last night, we were scheduled to have pulled pork sandwiches for dinner, but d came home with a craving for fish and chips (fries, for the Americans).
"Right," I said. "Let's do it..."
And so we did - we went to a local fish and chip shop, picked up cod and chips, and came home. And yes, I ate them eagerly, hungrily, savouring the grease and the salt and the vinegar and the more-grease.
There was a moment, afterwards, when things could have tipped over into man-breast beating and woe is me, but the sunshine was still hot and the Spring was still bright and I thought "Fuck it!" I'm not going to panic about this thing. Not now, not Tuesday. I'm going to climb back on my non-burned wagon, and I'm going to ride on. I'm going to do this, if and when I feel like it, in moderation.
The result of which is that, today, I've had precisely nothing in the way of pangs or yearnings. No day-after longings to repeat the experience or go on a grease bender. No moments of "It's all broken now, pass me the triple chocolate sundae!"
Just a sense of pleasure in the doing of it, and a sense of equal and opposite pleasure in the not-today-needing-to-do-it-again. And, of course, the inestimable satisfaction of giving the one-fingered salute to a long-dead smug philosopher.
Whether this means I've achieved a measure of self-mastery, I don't know. By his rationale, I would probably qualify, but I'm just going to see how this thing goes. Tomorrow, I'm back to early morning walks, biking and the like. Let's see where this week takes me.
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