Are you one of those people who likes to cook and is good at it and who eats three meals a day on a regular schedule? I wish I were like you. But, I’m not. I’m a snacker.
I’ve written here before that one of my favorite forms of procrastination is to look in the refrigerator for something to eat. What I’m looking for is a snack. And I don’t just look three times a day. I look all day. This means I need lots of snacks. There is a certain amount of planning that needs to go into making sure you have snacks that are good for you and not sabotages. Because when I run out of “good for me“ snacks I’ll eat anything that’s around and end up feeling terrible. And yet, I keep doing it.
I’m like an alcoholic who knows he should stop drinking because it makes him feel terrible, but he keeps on doing it. Or gambler, or person who gets into fights with everyone and feels terrible about it, but keeps on doing it. At some point we have to become sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.
And that, my friends, is the main message of the Course. It is trying to get us to decide we are sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. It wants us to stop snacking on things that make us feel bad and start snacking on peace. And it doesn’t have to be 30 minutes of meditation on a set schedule. That’s a regular meal. For snackers like me, a quick fix works best. That means there is a certain amount of planning that needs to be done ahead of time to make sure we’ve filled our refrigerators with snacks of peace that are ready to go. These snacks could be the daily lesson, an aspirin for headaches, a walk outside, hugging the dog, breath work, not eating food that doesn’t agree with you, or really anything that brings our mind back to peace. Peace is a choice, just like a snack.