Stoic Moment

“A feast is more than enough.”

This moment hit me right in the face. The problem I have in this moment of life, what I am actually getting more under control in the later years of my life, is I “over eat” on things. When I say “over eat” I mean not just with food. Let me unpack a little here for you.

I am well off, even privileged I would say. I have access to things that many across the globe don’t. I worked hard to get to that status. Where I am wrong, I believe, is where I don’t stop with just being happy with what I have. I am more self-aware of it, the impulse of it, the control it can have over my next choices.

I do over eat past the feast in front of me as much any more. I do it a lot less. I give it away a lot more than I ever have in the later years of my life. I don’t need it. But, as humans, we’re greedy. We’re collectors. We drive to protect our things, sometimes at all costs.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the 1986 movie Labyrinth , but there is a scene, a creature that Jim Henson created that is sort of pack rat. They collect all these things, carrying it like a shell on their back. It consumes them. This is what they end up like, what we must look like this to some.

We’re all in some respects The Junk Lady with our mental, virtual, physical backs piled high with stuff from over eating over the years.

I don’t need half of what I have. I mean this physically. I mean this positionally. I mean this as a status. I mean this mentally. I could stop accelerating, stop earning success trophies, to end right now with the race I have run to this point. I would not need a thing. But, lingering in the dark recesses of my mind, is the glutton. Is the Junk Lady.

I am going to work the rest of my years giving up that gorging. I will eat until I am full, then stop. Be happy. I see someone else that needs what’s left on the table, I will not take it from them. I’ll excuse myself, give access to the table to others that don’t have it, even relenting my own seat whenever I should. I don’t even have to eat until I am full before getting off the table. I just will, because I should.

I’m full. That should be enough for me, for us, for anyone. Stop over eating.

✌ Shawn