Well…
As is usually the case…things haven’t gone as planned. Now, I consider that a good thing for the most part. My whole idea of balancing a kind of healthfully lax social life with a very clean daily life hasn’t really panned out. My original thought, right after I started raw, was that the people around me should accept me and my lifestyle as such and be able to enjoy themselves regardless of what I am doing. I later, after seeing what a big failure that was, adopted the ‘well, maybe I’ll just join’em’-if you can’t beat, join’em kind a thing. You see, much like being the only sober guy at the party, being the only person at the party not eating junk food makes other people uncomfortable. Arguably worse, if I decided to actually be myself and eat the food that I want to eat; I then usually find myself surrounded by onlookers and explaining my whole nutrition and life philosophy and telling the same stories that I have already told 1000x pretty much all night long-this happens almost without fail-go ahead and try it, start eating raw chicken in front of a bunch of people eating normal food at a party.
Unfortunately, the ‘if you can’t beat’em, join’em’ philosophy has also proved itself more than unworthy of my time and effort. The biggest reason being that I never really feel good like I used to. I never have enough time to detox from the weekends and catch up on sleep(when I eat junk I sleep REALLY poorly). I still never drink, but it’s always been hard for me to not eat with my friends-I really feel the social pressure, and I can percieve their disappointment when I decline their offer to eat with them but offer my company in return. Maybe I am imagining it, but I really don’t think I am-really, I would probably be the same way and very likely am the same way in any number of different situations. In fact, I know I am. There is plenty of stuff I really love doing that I would love my friends to do with me that is often met with polite rejection. That’s ok, that’s how life works I guess; I just wish we didn’t all take it quite so hard. Not that we get up and cry, but there’s always that moment of disappointment.
And it’s that moment that defines my next approach: going back to my orginal line of thought, but with a sexier attitude. My whole issue before was that I was always either downplaying what I was doing, trying to fit in so as to not draw too much attention to what I was eating/doing or I was overdoing it specifically to draw attention to myself. And my issue afterwards was that I was becoming a person I didn’t want to be: one that worships balance so much that he doesn’t see the truth right in front of his eyes-that this kind of balance is making him sicker than the fun he’s having is making him healthier. So it’s not balance I want either-well at least not 50-50 balance, or even 90-10. I want something more like 99-1. Or, for the time being, 100-0(I don’t know if that counts). Right now I feel like I have to be proud of the lifestlyle I live and allow myself to live it in public again like I did when I first started. Although this time, live it for it, rather than for any and all attention it get’s me-which was very easy to get caught up in at first.
I still remember when I met my ex-girlfriend’s mom for the first time. I was driving her in my car, with one hand on the wheel and the other feeding myself with a bleeding steak, dripping down my arm and onto the car seat. She laughed and was shocked, as I’m sure a lot of people would have been, but that’s not really what I’m looking for these days. Now, given that I’m so convinced that this lifestyle is such a good one, I’d like people to be turned on by it, not just shocked by it. I’d like people to see it as I see it and I see it as the healthiest, greatest thing I have ever done for myself.
For the time being, maybe forever-who knows, my plan is to just stick to living as I know best and let the people around me know that they have to step it up too if they want to feel good about themselves. They have to understand that just because I am not engaging in the same activity as they are doesn’t mean they are less of a person or lazy or whatever. Instead of making them feel really terrible for their lives, I’d like to help make people feel real good, excited, about starting something new and healthy with their lives. There’s a difference between the two. I think, given the right circumstance, they both yield good results; but the latter might work for a larger number of people. It seems to me that it’s usually only the people who are REALLY stuck in a rut, a devastating kind of pattern, that need to get scared straight-that need to feel really bad about what they are doing right this instant so as to change. The others, which accounts for most of us, might be enticed better with honey than with vinager.
This, what I just said, represents a big change for me. Me being the person I am-kind of half angry almost all the time and really angry the rest of the time, has always sought to put people in their place and force change by way of showing people exactly how stupid I really think they are. Of course, that’s at odds with my thoughts that people do the best they can with what they’ve learned and when they have had the experiences they’ve needed to grow, they grow. So I know my attitude is some kind of backlash. Some kind of fear driven backlash. I think I’ve almost always taken the negative reinforcement route and I’m glad I did because now I see what an inredible failure rate it has. It seems that negative reinforcement is great at getting someone out of a the worst of the worst, but after that it’s always positive reinforcement that is responsible for their further growth-the pain of the negative doesn’t seem to last longer than it takes to get out of the terrible situation, This is not an incredibly new realization for me, but it’s application really is. I have been talking for so long about this but not acting. And all talk and no action makes Paul go crazy.
So here’s the plan: Eat raw, all raw for a good long time-at least until I’m feeling really healthy and vibrant on a more consistant basis. Also, I think I’ll incorporate regular 2x weekly fasts. Maybe just 3/4 day fasts, or at most 24 hours. They’ll be dry or juice, whatever I that day. I’d also like to get into the habit of going out to my dad’s place more often-to see him and also take more walks in the clean air of the forests. I think the regular energy boost will do me good. And last, I’d like to make time for getting some sun on a daily basis. Again, the energy boost from that will do me real good. And last, I’d like to start living externally like I either feel internally or want to feel internally-and want everyone else to feel internally, so instead of people feeling bad about being around someone who lives as I do, they feel excited about maybe changing themselves into something more sustainable than they currently are.
