Responsiblity

"I am responsible. When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of help always to be there. And for that: I am responsible."

(lifted from AA and modified)

I am responsible for my life. We each are responsible for our own life, our own decisions, regardless of who, who's or what advice we are following. The responsibility come back to us making a decision to follow or not. For this, I am responsible. This concept allows me to lay out my thinking or advice without any risk. It is totally up to the reader to accept or reject anything or everything I say.

Regardless of the advise taken or not, regardless of who provided the advise, regardless of the cost, even professional advise, we are all responsible for our own choice. All we have is choice. Some advise will be good, some irrelevant, or address the wrong problem, or is meaningless and some is just wrong, regardless of what it looks like. Some things are up to us, some are not. Choice is up to us, that is the most fundamental ability of the human animal. It is up to us to recognize this fact.

Buddha said some like: read, understand, analyze, contemplate, and if you find the advise good and sound, implement and test it, and if it is still good, adopt it and live up to it.

Overeating / obesity is a bitch of a problem; but even that statement is wrong. It is not a problem, it is a group of problems. It is plural, and each individual can have more than one. I will guess at one problem for each 10 Kg above ideal weight. I suggest that if we take apart the problem, one part at a time, one concept at a time, and apply and antidote for that part, the problem can be ground off. We need to acknowledge that the antidote only applies to that narrow part of the problem and may not be universal.

How big is this problem? How many parts does it have? How much time will it take? How much will it cost? How much is this going to change me?  How hard will it be? Will I ever just mature out of the problem? Ah there is one that I will take on.

Maturing out is a concept that shows up occasionally in addiction counseling. It is the concept that as we get older, learn more, change due to life and age, some problems just become smaller, less important, and we just mature out of the problem. At that point, the problem's solution is no longer a struggle, although we may need to be on guard of picking up the problem again, we no longer struggle. It is a concept, like me and tobacco, that I gave up nearly thirty years ago. Ultimately, this is the desired status of each problem part.

But then, what do I know?