With a Conscience - "The Twinkie that almost wasn't"...

"Life is like a twinkie, we all want the fluffy golden outside but it's the cream filling that really matters." - Tom Brady

Ah my goodness!  What a wacky world we live in huh?  Who would have thought that our educated, techno-savvy society would be mourning and hoarding Hostess Twinkies.  What's more important than the fact that the recipe which will most likely be bought and absorbed by some other company, is the fact that it appears that now the "junk food" industry is also being effected by our struggling economy.  Here, we thought junk food would be left alone.  Banks, mortgage companies and the automobile industry would be no match for golden sponge cake with the almost non-biodegradable filling.  We were wrong.

Once again, people's jobs are going away after decades and decades of giving us the one thing that cures broken hearts, long all night study sessions and clogs our arteries.  It was only recently that we discovered that you can even deep fry them!  Was a Twinkie-macaroni and cheese casserole next?  Junk food, or should I say the politically correct term..."comfort food" is part of our American culture for decades so maybe, maybe like our spending habits and our immediate gratification for all things, is changing.  Maybe America needs to grow up.  Maybe these things that are happening or have happened within the past decade or two are not Armageddon or the second coming.  Perhaps we are just being told to change our ways.

Change is tough to accept and it's hard to do.  Nicotine withdrawal, alcohol withdrawal, weight management are huge health issues, STILL.  We spend beyond our means and find it difficult to save.  I think people were not as upset about Twinkies as they were about the loss of control they feel over their own lives.  We all know what this feels like because we're human and we enjoy freedom.  Modern society enjoys its freedom to do whatever we please, whenever we please and don't want to be told otherwise.  We encourage entitlement.  We know it and our children know it too.  But here's the question.  Are we entitled to the consequences that come with assuming that our employers will take care of us?  Are we entitled to the consequences that come with feeling well...entitled?  

What matters most is that we keep a system of checks and balances in our lives.   Life is balance.  We can't do the things we used to do and that is how it should be.  That is the natural progression of our existence.  When we fight nature, we suffer.  Twinkies were never natural.  They just made millions feel good even when their lives were far from fortuitous.  My DNA, I suspect is like so many others.  It's tough to let go of our "inner Twinkie" even when we are forced to and that's the usually the way it works for most of us.  We won't change until we have to or the laws of nature force us to evaluate where our priorities are.

Like nature, like human beings, I'm sure Twinkies will rise again.  Will they look different?  Will they taste different? Probably, but they will serve their purpose because they had a purpose.  Now doesn't also sound like human nature too?  When we have purpose, we have happiness.  We just have to remember to check in with ourselves from time to time and taste the filling of our soul. If the inside filling tastes good to us, we're doing the right thing.