Subjective Matters

Quick tip: if you are eating or drinking anything with diet, lite (light), or low-fat on the package label, then you are eating or drinking too much of it. Switch to the non-diet, full-fat version. If the amount consumed is truly your concern, then eat or drink less of that product. Your body will thank you for the simpler and less processed food you will consume, and your mind will thank you for disposing of the diet / lite / low-fat label.

There’s a common saying: “you are what you eat”. It’s a harmless enough saying, right? Loosely we know it’s just scratching a surface, yet in general we nod our heads and think: “yeah, whatever I put in my body is going to have an effect on me, positive or negative.” Usually this phrase is used negatively, like a shake of the finger at a food stuff believed to be unhealthy.

There’s a deeper thread to “you are what you eat”, though, that isn’t worth loosely accepting. It’s a thread that throws out the “you” and says that the food you consume can fully constitute you — that your external environment fully constitutes you. “You” are merely an outcome of the external world.

Some might think I’m mincing words, but the implications of this simple phrase may exemplify our modern thought. Why didn’t we collectively settle on a phrase that instead puts “you” into the primary position? It’s not far off after all — a phrase that instead honors “you” would be: “you eat what you are”. Think about that:

You aren’t what you eat — you eat what you are.

This simple rearrangement of words completely changes the meaning of the phrase, making you primary and the external world secondary. When you eat what you are, the objective world becomes a symbolic reflection of a subjective you. This is much more responsibility than we’re used to dealing with. We’ve instead decided to put the responsibility on food, television, companies, pollution, bad bosses, and microbes. We’re viewed as products of our parents, society, generation, or genes.

Are you ready to take responsibility for your world, or will you continue to let your world take responsibility for you? It’s a change in thinking, and it starts with recognizing the roots of simple daily phrases and thoughts that we take for granted.

Magic pills are those modern concoctions, those man-made potions that provide “effects” to the body. Down our mouth, into our stomach, assimilated into the blood stream, out to the various organs — the body becomes a stage for a magic show beginning the moment we first decide to take the pill.

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Recently an acquaintance of mine asserted that she would not stop eating an enormous amount of fast food despite its health consequences. What was her reasoning? As she put it: "I smoke cigarettes, so what’s one more bad thing?"

This reminded me of the "broken window effect". Coined in a criminology book, it deals with the consequences of how one problem, if not fixed, compounds into other problems. Needless to say, this general theory can apply to many different topics. Quoting an article:

Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it’s unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.

Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars.

Our bodies, and more generally our lives are the building. What broken windows do we have that may be less obvious than smoking? Have you ever experienced that sigh of relief or surge of productivity after simply cleaning up a room in the house, finishing a serious talk with someone that has been put off for ages, or finally getting around to that project? You just fixed a broken window.