What happened to the mother who would not allow her children to leave the dinner table before they finished their vegetables? What happened to the dinner table? What happened to vegetables at mealtime?

We have become a “hurry-up” society and junk food people, at least in my opinion. We have no time, it seems, to pick up “g’s” when we are speaking or to learn manners or to think wholesome and edifying thoughts or to take time to plant roses, let alone smell them. (Not all, but many!)

We live on hamburgers and pizza, deep-fried chicken and Chinese takeout. Coke battles Pepsi and good old healthy milk is a “yuck” unless found in a milkshake.
And in the midst of it all, is this great emphasis on health and exercise, diets and fat farms.

Many of the purists eat just vegetables, jog and bicycle and protest that big business is polluting the environment. When I drive my car, I watch out for the bicyclists, and when I walk in the park, I never totally relax in fear of being run over by a jogger. Sometimes, I think there are more runners than running shoes.

But often, I want to ask a question. Are there just as many joggers who like to go jogging in their minds? I realize, of course, that a healthy body increases the chances of a longer life. But a healthy mind almost guarantees a more satisfying one.

We can jog through the pages of history, through the gardens of a poet’s mind, through the fantasy of pretend and, of course, through the Bible. We can jog in the open field of promise - held fast by our own visions and dreams.

Not only are many of us junk food junkies to our bodies; we are junk food junkies to our minds as well. We are not near as choosy now, as we were 40 or 50 years ago as to what we will accept and what we will reject from entering our minds and taking up residence there. We are, in many cases, lax stewards and just allow any old thing to throw its garbage in there.

We are invaded with cheap and promiscuous entertainment on our televisions and in our movie theatres. Instead of standing up for decency, we are debating its merits. Sports and sports figures along with many bazaar entertainers are idolized.

Degradation and irreverence seem to be the norm. The almighty dollar legalizes by excuse every immoral act and practice that disturbed and greedy minds can come up with.

Junk food for the mind is more dangerous than sugar and more addictive than heroin - all obtainable as easily as the click of a switch or the pounding of a key.

We are inundated with ads of all kinds about physical fitness and how to lose weight. But there is little advertising about mental fitness. Maybe that’s because we’ve made the body a god, and the mind the subject to bow down to it.

I think our minds, in general, have become fat with complacency and indifference - sluggish with irreverence and lack of respect. Where morality once sought new gems for her crown, she now sits outside the gate of the city, begging alms of those who were once her children.

I believe in freedom of speech and freedom of choice. But as I have mentioned so many times before, freedom has responsibility and must govern itself with common sense and decency.

JANUARY 2012 SENIOR LIVING MAGAZINE VANCOUVER ISLAND
JANUARY 2012 SENIOR LIVING MAGAZINE VANCOUVER & LOWER MAINLAND