you know, it just occurred to me that the media plays on our insecurities about sex just as much as it does on our paranoia about our health, and our laziness about cooking.
when you see an infomercial for the new amazing device that will cut cooking time in half, or sculpt your abs, you know it's all b.s. and don't pay it any attention - excluding boring saturday afternoons, when infomercials simply are the best programming available on television.
but, somehow, when the "experts" decide to tell you how to please him in the bedroom, or how to have bigger better and wetter orgasms, we think they may have something.
and at the end of the day, none of these people tell us anything new. deep down inside, we all know the only way to get the perfect body is to eat sensibly, and to move around (i choose not to use the word "exercise," because that's like using the word "work" to describe your life's passion),
similarly, deep down inside we all know that the only way to have great sex is to have a loving partner, and wad of self-esteem, and to be willing to try new things.
and yet this instinctive knowledge gets left behind whenever dr. ruth tells you to spice things up by leaving love notes in your vagina, throwing fears of paper cuts to the wind.
omens come in three's, it's a scientific fact.
but the multitude of times i've been asked to re-evaluate my stance on alcohol and/or drugs just doesn't have the ring of an omen to me.
i was thinking today, and it occurred to me that up until a year or so ago, i had never turned away from my values - of course, my values had never been challenged until then. for the past year i've been having some of my most fundamental values put to question.
i think that what makes you who you are is what and how you think. my beliefs and my values are who i am.
(and now, to synthesize these three unrelated paragraphs...)
in the time i've maintained my beliefs anf values, i've been myself, but unhappy. i've been and unhappy somebody.
if i were to change my views on alcohol/drugs simply because i was asked to, to give up my values, i'd be nobody. but happy, because i wouldn't have the stress of constantly being challenged on my shoulders.
what occurred to me today is that i like being happy, and that it is very tempting to be a happy nobody instead of an unhappy somebody.
it also occurred to me that the happiness of a nobody doesn't mean much to anybody.