For some people sins are very easy to commit. It seems that nearly every day gives them one or more fresh opportunities to exercise this talent. Such individuals are objects of deep envy for some of us who do not possess such a ready skill. Now the fact that we are less favored with their aptitudes does not necessarily mean that we are totally lacking in indulgences. Nearly every day I am so tempted when I sit down to a meal. After filling myself with my wife’s exceptional cooking, we will often be presented with an amazing dessert. Confronted with such a spectacular opportunity to gorge myself my usual resistance crumbles and leaves me helpless to refuse. I never try to estimate the calorie content until after my portion vanishes. At that point my conscience appears with its heavy judgmental attitude and commences makes me feel like I have just re-assassinated Abraham Lincoln. In spite of my intense feeling of guilt, a few hours later, I am prepared to repeat the performance at the very next meal. My life seems to be a cycle of yielding to such temptations, feeling heavy gluttonous guilt, recovering just in time for the next gorge-fest and repeating this same sequence of events.

In spite of the hazards and calamities of calories, they nevertheless have several virtues. For one thing, they often taste good. This alone would be enough to assure their use by human consumers, but that is not their only redeeming feature. In addition to their good flavors, they provide fuel, energy and survival for their faithful users. Without them our lives would be barren, joyless and short. In addition to these unpleasantries, we would be eternally hungry, lean and, very likely, highly irritable. It makes many of us very happy that we are able to indulge our appetites without limit and gorge ourselves obscenely and not be bothered by doubt, hesitation or conscience.

But ravenous fixation on food is only one of the savage temptations endured by me. Pill-taking is another activity in which I reluctantly engage and practice with depressing regularity. I have an assortment of pills of various colors and contents that treat everything except serious medical problems. I suspect that most of them are made of inert materials such a baking soda compressed and shaped into a pill and containing some kind of bittering substance. I sincerely hope that they at least do no harm. Whatever their makeup they need a prescription which must be renewed at the end of that period and come in consecutive three-month supplies. I guess that pill-taking does not qualify as a sin unless it is done to excess and involves illegal drugs, but it certainly seems to be a serious weakness and borders on questionable behavior

Television, for many of our weak-willed fellow citizens (this, of course, does not include you or me) is an especially nasty temptation. A television set is a truly invasive device that is intensely inviting because it is always close at hand, always seductive and whose offerings are nearly always free of further cost. So, “What”, you may ask, “is so bad about that?” I’ll tell you what. It turns out that television is infernally addictive, entrapping folks of all ages in its loathsome embrace and entices them to lifetime sentence of atrocious viewing: news that is mostly airy banter among under-challenged anchors or puerile reporters giving breathless reviews of local trivia; reality shows that feature shameless contestants performing mindless acts of crushing embarrassment; occasions of senseless violence and other displays that rob the viewer’s mind of all traces of functioning brains and leave only sizzling ruins. So, who can resist such entertainment? Apparently, not very many people. It is not so much that television is so bad: it robs its users of vast amounts of time that could be used for other, more productive enterprises, like reading, conversation, sleeping, cracking knuckles writing, thinking, painting, staring blankly at the walls and other engaging uses of time. It seems that television users make up nearly all of our society. It also seems that there are a small but solid group of self-righteous folks who almost totally avoid the use of television. This group is solidly defiant but mostly inert. You may have noticed that I have not included myself in either group. It’s not so much that I don’t espouse the practices of either group; it’s mostly that I have little stomach for embarrassing myself by taking sides.

These are only a few of the ways in which we humans are able to mistreat our bodies, minds and spirits. As effective as these are in abusing one’s body, there are many others that perform similarly or, perhaps, even better, in carrying out this form of self-abuse. For example there are a number of temptations that relate to prurience and weaknesses of the flesh and that may lead into several eyebrow-raising depictions. I am convinced, dear reader, that none of those would interest anyone reading these paragraphs so I have decided to spare you the burden of placing them before you. It is astonishing that we can treat ourselves so execrably and still manage, in many cases, to survive childhood, teen years and young adulthood. Mother Nature, it would appear, sometimes takes pity on us and, for the most part, forgives us our transgressions.