Happy Face 6

I want to talk a little bit about the wellness industry, Gentle Reader. It's really kind of sad, you know, and so very typical of self-hating white North American Protestant culture, if such a thing could still be said to exist. Oh, but it does. This mania, this absolute unforgiving and resolute obsession with self-improvement. So, where has this brought us? Well, they dumped religion a couple of generations ago, and without church or God to keep us in line, we're all left kind of on our own and to our own devices. I mean, I am writing this from the perspective of a believer. No, not simply as one who believes in a set of doctrines, dogmas and teachings (which I often find myself questioning, examining and at times even challenging or openly defying), nor as one who believes in an invisible deity for whom there is no empirical or scientific evidence, but there are some things that shouldn't have to require empirical evidence , given that in the case of God, we are touching on the very source of all being and existence, and therefore, this is so huge and unfathomable that we simply lack the capacity, the means, the understanding, the instruments or the brain power to be able to comprehend) so, no we aren't really good enough the way we are. By the same token, there isn't much we can do to improve ourselves. This isn't to say that most of us couldn't stand improving, but rather that we are going about it in the wrong way. There are two human character flaws that the self-help industry really makes hay on: our shame, and our self-hatred. Without God and church to absolve us, many end up worshiping before the altar of Gwyneth Paltrow in the temple of self-improvement, electing her and others as the chosen high priestess to see us through to a new and improved self: healthier, stronger, younger and sexier. And so it goes with all this nonsense about healing crystal and cleansing, for which, like God there is no scientific evidence to support and unlike God are sufficiently minor and quantifiable that stand to call to call for good, rigorous and fully peer-reviewed scientific testing. But we all need to believe in something, something that doesn't dethrone the mighty self, that is. And here is where the problem lies, and why the wellness industry has become so rich and powerful. Having kicked God out of the picture, we are left with nothing but ourselves to worship, and worship we must, because we are designed to adore, whether it be the Deity, an idol, or our sorry little selves. So we work and labour and toil at making ourselves better, at transforming ourselves into the perfect and flawless little gods and goddesses we know that we really ought to be. We usually fail miserably. I think that at the heart of this vicious circle is this very sad and pathetic self-hatred that we can't ever seem to shake. This could also be from some of the more puerile excesses of the self-esteem movement, where self-love becomes conflated with self-adoration. Except for one salient little fact. the selves that we adore and worship are pretty pathetic. This makes us ashamed, and so we endeavour to work our butts off to make ourselves better. Well, better for what? There is nothing wrong, by the way with improving our health, and an awful lot that is right about it. It is just the joyless and grim task that the self-improvement industry has made of this and the way they capitalize on it. One example is food. I am thinking particularly of one horrible green vegetable called kale. Now how many of you reading this actually love kale? You're lying. Try telling me that hooked up to a polygraph. It would probably explode. I for one do enjoy vegetables. But not kale, which is tough and flavourless and I don't care a tinker's damn that it's good for you. I wouldn't even feed that to a cow! I do like broccoli, and cabbage, and brussels sprouts, etcetera and I am also rather fond of gai lan. Often at a buffet, I will ignore the sweets and pastries and head straight for the broccoli and tomatoes. Not because I have trained myself to do this, as one smug psychiatrist fatuously put it, but because I actually crave those vegetables and for this reason have come to prefer them. I really don't see the point of wellness that is also joyless. The French and Italians have an approach to food that we in Canada would do well to emulate. Eating, for those people, is for pleasure, and they also have the common sense to take joy and pleasure in eating healthy as well as questionable foods, but all in the right balance and moderation that gives them vastly lower national rates of cardiovascular disease than we have. Eat with a happy face.