The Human Condition on a Monday

I wrote this in the first week of 2014:

A is for apple.

Well, we made it through the first Monday of the year.  Did you twirl brilliantly through your Monday? If so, the rest of us salute you.

Over here in my corner the best I can say is that I didn’t get hurt. I did pretty much what I was supposed to do and I’m going to bed sober and tired.  For many, that would be a very good day, indeed.

But I didn’t write anything profound. I didn’t glean an inmate story that moved my heart or his. 

I ate too much bread. Probably because I made five loaves yesterday – 3 loaves of zucchini-cranberry-walnut and 2 of all the whole grains I could find, which in this house is considerable. So tonight I feel somewhat like a fish who escaped the baited hook – in order to swallow the sinker.  In my defense, it isn’t that I ate bread all day long – just that I had it for breakfast, then for lunch, then for dinner. 

Len and I each take a sliced apple to work every day for our lunch. Apples are healthy, crunchy, sweet - a simple food straight from Mom Earth to us.

Every day I eat my sandwich, and then I eat my apple pieces. 

Except, about one day per week I don’t eat my apple. Maybe guys come in while I’m eating at my desk. Maybe I’m not hungry right then and I forget later.  Maybe I’m stuffed on whole grain bread.

I try to remember to eat it in the truck on my way home, but today I was wearing mittens; it just wasn’t going to work.

Do you have ordinary health-full, reasonable things you do most days -- but not all of them? 

This is just about humankind’s oldest question. Why, if we know something is a good choice, why don’t we always make it?  Why do we sabotage our own health and happiness by skipping the brisk walk, over-indulging in too-rich treats, not doing the next thing on our list of needful things to do, skipping the apple?

I don’t know why, when we see what it is we ought to do, we don’t always do it.

But it does mean that we are here on Mother Earth. And tomorrow is the first Tuesday of the year and I have an apple ready.