Many of my coworkers, like many people in general, are on more or less regular diets in order to either lose weight or preserve their current weight. As it happened, yesterday was not a good day for my coworkers when it came to their diets, as we were provided with donuts by at least two of our number, along with some bagels that did not last long. After the second person brought in donuts yesterday morning, we all figured that it was more or less an official cheating day and that it would not really be of any particular benefit to pretend otherwise. Unfortunately for me, that meant I spent a great deal of the day fighting off a food coma from my own lamentable eating decisions, along with my lamentable lack of sleep throughout the week because I am a chronic and so-far incurable insomniac. Even if I don’t have a diet to cheat on, I still did not feel particularly good about feeling so tired that merely remaining conscious required a struggle. When one feels like taking a siesta most of the day, one is probably going about life the wrong way.
All too often in life, we face a tension that threatens our well-being between a general policy of restraint and occasional moments of chaos and anarchy (we may call these “cheating days”) where the usual rules are suspended and conduct is less restrained. In such times, like Mardi Gras, Halloween, or May Day [1], the dropping of our usual pretenses reveals the sort of wild hoodlums lie underneath most ordinarily respectable people. The same tendency makes places like Dubai or Las Vegas or the Jersey Shore immensely popular, as they offer places where an escape from usual restrictions makes one’s day to day existence easier to deal with. Yet this essentially heathen approach to living has serious downsides, for as much as one might want to say that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, we are the sort of beings whose behavior carriers consequences where the lapse of a moment can lead to a lifetime of repercussions that seem far disproportionate to one’s wrongs.
This may seem initially to be a trivial matter, if it were not for the fact that the same false dilemma between excessive restraint and dangerous moments of release undergirds the persistence and desirability of addictive behaviors. A life that is overly constrained will tend to seek an escape from all of that pressure at the weakest point where distraction and temporary relief can be found. Sadly, all too often, this search for relief in casual intimacy or in the release of anger and frustration or in the bottle of one’s favorite beverage of choice often leads to one’s life become even more filled with stress and difficulties, which only increases the desire for escape that exacerbates the troubles and problems of one’s existence. Given the nearly universal nature of this problem, it is a wonder that we persist in such unsatisfactory and unprofitable addictions, except for the fact that we are all creatures of habit to a degree that often serves not only to amuse others but also threaten our own well-being and sometimes even our survival.
What is the anatomy of a cheating day? For one, we must be in an existence full of pressures and constraints that wear on us. To the extent that life is easygoing, there is little pressure that induces the need for release. When life is full of stress and pressure, though, the urge to find release from that can often be a matter of life and death, and it is there that we are faced with the insoluble dilemma between the threat of death and disgrace from collapsing under pressure and stroking out or having a heart attack, or the threat of death and disgrace because of our poor choice of how to release the pressure from our lives in some sort of unwise and unacceptable behavior. A cheating day merely happens to be the case when a life that is under too much pressure finds a temptation in a weak spot and choose to release the pressure at that point, judging the short-term pain of that stress to be worth the risk of long-term repercussions from that mistake in judgment.
How do we overcome this problem? Simply to deal with the cheating side of the problem is not acceptable, as we must find some way of dealing with the unrealistic stresses and pressures that come upon a life. It would appear as if in seeking a more consistent manner of life that avoids cheating days and the heathen tradition of occasional chaotic morality requires a life that is lived openly and transparently enough that we do not let pressure build up to alarming levels in the first place. Avoiding this situation requires that we build relationships where honesty and sincerity and openness are valued on both sides, so that the stresses of life can be dealt with in a timely and appropriate fashion rather than requiring more drastic action to preserve internal equilibrium. This places upon us a heavy responsibility of choosing our friends and our lovers well, and working hard in our families and communities and congregations so that everyone’s concerns can be heard and addressed and so that no one is forced under a crushing burden that is impossible to bear and that can only lead to some sort of inevitable disaster when something breaks. Far too many hearts, bodies, minds, spirits, and relationships are broken in this world as it is.
[1] See, for example:
Bhttps://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2014/03/04/breaking-all-the-rules/
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/sons-of-anarchy/
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/11/01/devils-night/
Edge Induced Cohesion 