Diet Fail 2019 – Day 10: I Failed as Expected – But Look at This Yogurt!

OK – everybody’s got ‘stuff’ they have to deal with. If you want to avoid this:

1. Don’t love of care about anyone
2. Sell all your possessions
3. Move out of your house / condo / apartment
4. Live on a mountaintop

Or be this guy. He’s probably worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He’s (as far as I know at present) homeless, has one bag of possessions, and sleeps on friend’s couches.

Like Thoreau, it’s kinda not real. Thoreau also talked about living a simple life, but as I understand it, Walden was not far from his perhaps not rich but comfortable family’s home (they made pencils, if I recall correctly). At any time, he could have called it quits and gone back to the Real World. Same as the guy above. At any time he can give up his minimalism, buy a mansion and a yacht, and be done with his couch surfing.

Most of us don’t have this luxury.

We’ve built lives step-by-step and for most of us, riches do not appear. People came into our lives and we allowed ourselves to love them, though love almost always leads to heartbreak in some form. For some of us our love created new people who will always break our hearts as they grow up and grow away as they must to become their own persons. The great psychoanalyst Erich Fromm said that a child’s love is the most tragic as it must always fade or the child becomes a cripple of sorts – a Norman Bates. It does not mean they stop loving their parents, but that golden time where Mom and Dad were their entire world must pass as they grow and we are revealed as human and fallible.

We invested our time in careers and the money that came from that work into possessions, experiences, and investments. Most of the possessions seem of much less value after owning them than before. The experiences fade from memory and become a series of photos that form some narrative that provides glimpses of the truth – or just provide an image from the past with no memory at all. Our investments are a hope for our future but can disappear in an instant as the future holds no certainties for those of us that inhabit the middle class.

So I failed because ‘reasons’. I haven’t given up, I’ve just had a setback. I’m not going anywhere – I’ve been here – failing – since 2007.

But let me tell you about my latest batch of yogurt!

It was done today and – wow – what a beautiful batch! People who make this yogurt often complain about it being watery. Take a look at this pic:

My aged yogurt used as the starter after more than a dozen batches still got the goods and made a fine, beautiful batch.

Now, when I get back on my diet, it’s waiting.