I Could Be Wrong, But...
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Are You Getting Enough?
©2008 David Boyne
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Something strange and wonder-filled happened to me recently that had not happened to me for a very long time. I got hungry. Really hungry.
Somehow, I forgot to eat every 3.172 hours, the way I usually do. I fell into an accidental fast. It lasted an eternity of 12 hours.
But.
The terrific strain of not eating for half a day raised my consciousness to an exciting new level. I became, ever so briefly, enlightened. I arose from the life-threatening ordeal, like the legendary Phoenix, on fire! No wait, that’s a different story, the one involving Puerto Rican rum and cigarette lighters. What I meant to write is, I arose from the life-threatening experience of going hungry for 12 hours, with a revolutionary new info product: The Secret Miracle of Getting Enough Diet™.
Sure, other info-product hucksters will assert that the true foundation of all wealth—and all the infinite forms of human creativity—is money. But I will not stoop to speak ill of my competitors, choosing instead to trust in the market place of ideas to expose them as incompetent, wrongheaded, miserably benighted cretins.
What I will do, is share with you, dear reader, The Truth™!
The foundation of all wealth—and all the infinite forms of human creativity—is having enough to eat.
Lesson 1 of 162 in The Secret Miracle of Getting Enough Diet™
When we don’t have enough to eat, we can think of nothing but our next meal.
Case in point. Once upon a time, long ago and far away, in a Universe not unlike our own, I had 32 cents in my possession and I was in the middle of a thousand-mile hitchhiking journey. I was hungry. Really hungry.
After two days with no improvement in my economic or gastronomic condition, I was ready to do just about anything to get something to eat—beat someone up, steal their wallet, maybe even marry their unhappy daughter and get a cushy job in their fish cannery.
I finally relieved my hunger by striding into a grocery store, locating the meat section, and stuffing packages of hot dogs, salami, and liverwurst into my jeans. I then headed toward the exit, grabbing a jar of spicy mustard on the way, and waddling past the suspicious cashiers, who were not paid anywhere near enough to confront a shaggy teenaged male with a lean and hungry look—as well as a frighteningly large bulge at the crotch of his jeans.
At that moment, my patron saint was not Jean Val Jean, stealing food to feed some hungry kids. It was Scarlet O’Hara—pissed-off and screaming at the darkening Technicolor® sky of famine, “As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again!”
But.
Lesson 2 of 162 in The Secret Miracle of Getting Enough Diet™
When we DO have enough to eat, we think about everything and anything but food.
Well-fed people spend their time creating. They write piano concertos, software programs, and essays. They design and build spacecraft, then strap themselves inside and blast off. They coach their kid’s soccer team, buy foreclosed single-family homes and open vineyards and restaurants to feed hungry people.
Every single person on earth is continually moving from not having enough to eat, to having enough to eat, to not having enough to eat. And then there are some of us, who are continually getting too much to eat.
Case in point. As I learned in American History 101, while America was “discovered” by people who had enough to eat, the people who then moved to this Brave New World did not have enough to eat. Once here, they set about correcting that situation, claiming that having enough to eat, and that having enough land on which to grow enough to eat, was their Manifest Destiny. Soon, all the immigrants to the New World had enough to eat. And a Realtor® on every corner. However, the indigenous inhabitants, who for thousands of years had had enough to eat and land to roam on, no longer did. They set about correcting that situation. But failed.
And.
Immigrants to the New World soon had more than enough to eat, so began sending their leftovers to the Old World, feeding their relatives who did not have enough to eat. (Nowadays they just wire a money order.) The money made was used to capitalize new factories, new industries, and new inventions (as opposed to old inventions). The American Dream of getting enough, had been realized.
But.
Americans did not stop at enough. They kept going. They began to consume far more than they exported. One of their new inventions, Buy Now Pay Later, combined in an out-of-control chain reaction with two old inventions, Advertising and Borrowing. In a blink of History’s eye, America the Beautiful became America the Fat.
Lesson 3 of 162 in The Secret Miracle of Getting Enough Diet™
When we have too much to eat, food loses flavor, no longer sates us, and becomes disposable. We become fat and unhappy.
Case in point. Get your dog, or borrow your neighbor’s dog, and take it for a walk. I guarantee that within 13 minutes you will be astonished by the quantity and variety of food spread o’er the streets of this country. In 13 minutes, you’ll discover what any dog knows: America’s streets are not paved with gold, they are paved with food—in an endless, eat-all-you-can-find smorgasbord.
Here are excerpts from a very long grocery list of food my dog found on the street:
• box of chocolate mint Girl Scout cookies
• stack of pancakes on a paper plate (topped with butter and syrup, white plastic knife and fork on the side)
• puffy bag of micro-waved popcorn
• cornucopia of corporate concocted fast food, from French fries and half-eaten burgers and hotdogs, to nearly full buckets of grease-coagulated extra-crispy extra-spicy fried chicken
The Truth™: On three separate walks, two in Portland and one in San Diego, my dog and I came across extra-large, perfectly intact, no delivery box in sight, pepperoni pizzas. The pizzas just lie there on the sidewalks, like manna from heaven. I still wonder, is there some kind of wormhole in the back of a pizza oven in North Bergen, New Jersey? Do random pizzas whiz through that wormhole and instantly appear on the sidewalks of Portland, or San Diego, or Kokomo? Is there a pizza on the roof of your house? Let me know: (Pizza On My Roof!)
I know from experience that people who don’t have enough to eat can upset the status quo. I even learned in Western Civilization 101 that once upon a time in a land called France, people who did not have enough to eat misdirected their rage for food into storming an empty jail and starting a bloody revolution, which, through the complex machinery of Cause and Effect, made France into the gastronomic Mecca of the world.
So.
I could be wrong, but I suspect it’s over-fed people who are far more dangerous. They always want more. Of everything. Once they go beyond enough, they can never get enough. (And you can forget about pacifying over-fed people with cake—they’ve already got warehouses full of the stuff, and own all the bakeries and trademarks on the brands.)
This is why I have just given you Lessons 1, 2 and 3 of
The Secret Miracle of Getting Enough Diet™
ABSOLUTELY FREE!
( For a limited time only.)
BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!
IT IS ONLY WHEN YOU PURCHASE THE FULL 162 LESSONS of
The Secret Miracle of Getting Enough Diet™
THAT YOU WILL BE IN FULL POSSESSION of The Secret™ of The Truth™:
GETTING ENOUGH is not only the essential balancing act of being free,
GETTING ENOUGH is a Joy-Filled State of Being!
BUT not until you purchase the full 162 Lessons will you immediately put the awesome power of The Secret Miracle of Getting Enough Diet™ to work for you!
You will suddenly understand that you are in fact at this very moment and in every moment—getting enough—and just enough—no more, no less!
“It’s so amazing!” “There’s nothing else like this in the world!”
Yes, you will feel so darn good, that Life will become a walk on the sunny side of the street! You won’t have a care in the world! Your theme song will be that old Al Jolson tune, Sitting On Top of the World! Your happy, creative mind will be busy, busy, busy—writing that sonnet to your husband—developing that idea for a cure for HIV AIDS—imagining the bedtime story you’ll tell your daughter tonight! You will be happy! You will want only what you have, not what you don’t have! While being arms-wide-open to receiving More More More!
Magically and mysteriously, when you purchase the complete 162 Lesson Course of The Secret Miracle of Getting Enough Diet™—every sentence you write—and the very Life you lead—will be bold—use exciting em dashes—and end with an exclamation mark!
Until you get hungry. Really hungry. And can think of nothing but your next meal.
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