Wasted Life

How did it come to be that alcohol is such an important part of life. Before I start, this is my perspective, which may be more about me than society. Is it just me or is alcohol, a drug, an important part of every social encounter, every weekend, every holiday or special event? If you go to the grocery store, my local Safeway or QFC for example, the alcohol section is the largest section of the store: there is the aisle of beer coolers, the cold wine section and the room temperature wine, and the spirits aisle. and then add the end of aisle displays of beer and wine located next to various sections of the store. How did this come to happen? We have a heroin crisis in the US, but we don't mention alcohol as a major issue? And yet, more people die as the result of alcohol use than die of all the other drugs combined. We clearly have an alcohol crisis in this country. How did we get here?

For one, alcohol has received a free pass for the past 87 years since prohibition ended. Alcohol has been marketed as the most wonderful product, the perfect pairing to all of life's happenings. Get married? Drink! Get divorced? Drink! Graduate? Drink! Get/lose a job? Drink! Regardless of what happens in your life, alcohol is there to make the pain go away or add to the pleasure. That's the message we receive and, seemingly, the one we believe. But, alcohol destroys lives. Ruins marriages. Tears apart families. In fact, scratch the surface of most social issues and alcohol is sitting somewhere in the back of the room contributing to a great many of the problems. I don't know the precise statistics, but something like 40% of all violent crimes are alcohol related. Think about that for a minute. Hear people screaming in the middle of the night? Alcohol. What to do? For one, we could start to be honest about the drug we are dealing with. 

I am not saying that everyone that drinks has a problem, but I do feel that everyone that drinks avoids the idea they are using a drug when they sip that wine or gulp that cocktail. It has to be the only drug that is marketed as being so much fun. Marketing always lies but is there any other product out there where the lies are so thick? Looking at the advertising for alcohol one has the impression it's the greatest product on earth. You can pretty much take any add and end it with a bottle of some sort of alcohol and the ad would make sense as an ad for alcohol because everything has been so distorted. Everything is a time for glass of wine ad. Our heads are so flooded with these messages, and the way we are used to living, that anything that happens has to include alcohol.

Do Better

I suppose it's kind of a childish question: What is the meaning of life? If you try to find an answer by reading philosophy you will encounter the response that it's not a real question because there is no answer that is good enough. What possible response could anyone provide to that question? Love? Art? Caring for others? Leaving the world a better place? Procreation to keep the species going? There is no answer that is satisfying. What are we left with? We look up at the night sky and feel the power of the universe and then we go to bed to face another day. That's about it. One answer could be to continually, up to the very end, strive to be a better version of yourself today than you were yesterday. If you were a fool yesterday strive not to be one today. If you were selfish yesterday, strive not to be selfish today. If you were lazy yesterday, strive to not be lazy today. 

Life has to be about becoming something better each day. The question becomes what constitutes better? I think each of us knows what better could be just as we generally know what doing the right thing means. We intuitively know the right thing to do. 

What am I saying? Listen to that inner voice and let it become the dominate voice, the one that knows you could be better. There is time for all things if we are wise with our time.