I had quite a moment of revelation yesterday. Regrettably, it wasn’t about anything that truly matters like “how we can achieve racial harmony” or “how we can fix what’s wrong with public education” or “how the Chicago Cubs can start playing like a ball club instead of a chess club.” Nope, nothing as important as all that.
My moment of revelation came as I was sitting down to eat my favorite Subway lunch. . . 6” double turkey on wheat, lettuce, onion, tomato, light mayo. And for dessert- one M&M cookie. My procedure has always been this: Subway makes 4 or 5 different kinds of cookies, but the only kind that really interests me are the M&M. Sometimes they have them and sometimes they don’t. Basically, if they have them, I get one. And if they don’t happen to have them, I don’t. This felt to me like a perfectly sensible and simple means of exerting some self-control when it comes to something I like but which I know is not particularly good for me.
It was as I was sitting there, eating my sub and glancing at the cookie that it suddenly hit me that what I had convinced myself was an example of admirable self-control was in fact nothing of the sort! Only buying a cookie if there’s one there is roughly akin to Only eating potato chips if there’s a bag of them sitting on the kitchen counter. Call that whatever you like- but don’t call it Self-Control because it’s nothing of the kind. Self-Control is when there’s a bag of Kettle-Style Lay’s Potato Chips sitting on the counter, calling to you < singing a love song to you! > and you want to open up the bag and devour the whole thing- but you don’t because you know that you’re singing with the Racine Symphony at the end of August and you don’t want the stage to collapse as you mount the stairs for your first song. So you skip the potato chips and opt for some delicious celery sticks instead.
THAT’S self- control. Not my little cookie caper, which is an embarrassing example of Self-Delusion unworthy of anyone, let alone someone with a master’s degree. I mean, Duh!
But I’m happy to confess this because I know that I am not alone. If modern Americans have anything in common, it’s our nearly limitless capacity to talk ourselves into believing just about anything- but especially adept at deluding ourselves into believing that we are doing something truly noble or praiseworthy. . . or that we are perfectly justified in doing something that in fact we are not. I see the latter all the time at Carthage with various students who talk themselves into various courses of action that are likely to be counter-productive in the long-term but will feel good in the short term. Exhibit A is all the times I’ve heard a freshman music major say that they’re dropping their music major because studying music theory is ruining music for them- because music is something that has always given them joy and it’s impossible for them to engage in serious study of something they love without having that love snuffed out by all of that study. Maybe. But I think in 9 out of 10 cases, said student is finding Music Theory really tough- tougher than they expected it to be- and they just don’t want to deal with it. Which is fine; it’s a free country. But don’t concoct some elaborate scenario in which your love of music is sure to be ruined by serious study of it. Be honest with yourself. Or I think of students who dropped out of a production or an ensemble because they are so terribly busy with their classwork and are anxious to bring their grades up- only to learn later that they have been a negligible presence in the classroom and seem to be spending inordinate amounts of time playing video games in their room instead. The academic ruin itself which usually ensues is sad enough- but in some ways what I find even more pathetic is the dishonesty which shrouds it. And by the way, in no way have college students cornered the market on this- and you only need look to me for a reminder of that.
Anyway, I am increasingly convinced that the happiest and best-adjusted people in this world are those who are really honest with themselves about themselves. And when you’re not honest with yourself, you can easily talk yourself into counter-productive choices or even find yourself traveling down some very scary roads to ruin. My Great Cookie Embarrassment is (thankfully) a fairly painless reminder for me that I need to keep myself honest at all time. . . and again, I don’t mean Honestly in the sense of “that dress makes you look fat” kind of honestly, directed to others. I mean that Inner Honesty that speaks right up and says (to yourself) “Who are you trying to fool? Give it up!”
It’s the kind of honesty that gets us eating a little more celery and fewer M&M cookies. The kind of honesty that gets us back into a 38-inch waist that we wore a year ago and are anxious to wear again.