Ever heard of orthorexia?
Apparently it’s when you’re obsessed with eating foods you believe to be healthy.
First, I feel like “candy corn” is the plural form. (That “s” makes me uncomfortable.)
Second, so you mean… picky eaters?
Isn’t this isn’t this just another dietary label for people who chronically can’t balance because they don’t listen to their bodies and get caught up in some irrational goal about being a certain way, internally or externally? (Hopefully that mouthful of an inquiry is healthy enough for my literary orthorexics out there to nom on).
I mean, an obsession crosses over to “unhealthy” or “addiction” when it becomes a detriment to yourself and/or those around you. Is it keeping you from seeing anyone? Look into that, then. Is it making your hair fall out? Look at that, then. Imbibing becomes alcoholism when you take too much and frequently. Juicing or fasting to detox becomes anorexia when it turns into a week which then turns into a month which turns into a “Mayhaps I’ll go breatharian”. Same with cosmetic alterations.
But if you’re happy and not hurting anyone with your commitment to un-health, who am I to judge just how quickly or slowly you race to the six foot drop at the finish line every damned one of us is heading towards? Who is anyone to question that? What the question is, is: are you being a parasitic cancer to society and your friends or family or yourself because of it?
Because that does affect other people.
Which means you may need to stop.
I know, I know. It’s hard to accept the transient nature of everything – whether it’s our weight, youth, or that nice cockle-warming buzz you get only with that first quarter glass of wine. Our inability to deal with the discomfort of living is wrought out of a desire to be or feel our best all the time. That’s impossible. So some of us make ourselves all sad inside about it. With a dietary obsesh, you might wake up retaining water or feeling depressed – so you go to a polar extreme to compensate. Even spiritual path trekkers are guilty – it’s easy to end up morphing into an aghori when you try to meditate on just how you’re fcking up. Sure, you had a good intention and wanted to fix yourself. But you’re so anxious about being out of control – that you end up missing the entire point of what you’re doing – and also the human connection because you couldn’t STFU your brain enough now to be less distracted later.
It’s all about the “deal with it” freefall.
Like that chick from Frozen says:
This “orthorexia” is just the non-balance from not letting go of illogical life expectations.
Which makes it no different than the common freakout we all share when there’s a schism between our best laid plans… and reality. We buck logic and get pissed off that we couldn’t will our desires into existence. Then we self-sabotage until we do enough spiritual spelunking to realize how ridiculous we’re being.
That’s why the piece I read on “I was a borderline orthorexic” kinda surprised me.
Because with such a deep meditation practice as she illustrated (to the point of compulsion – the whole point of the article), how did it take her three years to figure that out about herself? I don’t mean that in a judgmental way, either. I say it because, for me, the insight that I was being such a bad-at-life douchebag clobbered me over the cranium like a cosmic “wrong way” sign on my first five minute try with meditation. It’s something I have to re-learn every time I do it too, apparently. Hence the reason I’m less of a transcenderexic (#AshleyOGterm) than some. Still, I do it. And while every sesh is indeed an act of ego masochism, it’s worth mining this shiz outta ourselves.
‘cause like Oscar Wilde says:
We’ve all got afflictions. Our charge is to find out the imbalance, set it right, and eschew the shiz that doesn’t serve us anymore. So – just remember – while you most def matter and are important in this world, you’ve got to do the work to make the scales fall even. Just like the rest of us. Which means that even though I love ya… you’re not special.
And neither is your -rexia.