I believe I could still, to this day, easily eat an entire box of Girl Scout ‘Samoas’… but each one of those tasty temptations is 75 calories! A cookie just about 2″ across, with a hole in the middle… 75 calories. “One serving is 2 cookies.”. Huh. I believe, in practice, one serving is closer to one box. LOL. I enjoyed the two cookies, one serving, entirely mindfully… tasting the sweet caramel-y flavor… noticing for the first time the slight wax-y quality… savoring the chewy goodness… no ‘will power’ necessary, apparently… it’s pretty easy to eat just two cookies, it seems, by doing nothing else but experiencing the cookies in that moment.  Interesting.  I wonder if I would similarly be satisfied with less sex if I were able to willfully savor each element of those experiences in fullness, also? Sounds like a very fun bit of theory to validate… would emotional experiences be more profound, more meaningful, or more ‘valuable’ if I really… did something different… and felt more of/about the feeling? I’m not sure at this point what I am attempting to express… something that feels very important. Language itself is getting the way of communicating.

Let’s talk for a minute about that – about language impeding communication. “Language functions by agreement.” I’m certain I am quoting someone…but when I google the quote, I don’t find it cited anywhere/when. Frustrating. I’m quite sure it is not my original thought. lol. It seems true enough, though, doesn’t it? As logical propositions go, it’s hard to argue with productively. When we don’t have a shared definition of terms, it’s pretty easy for any two or more people to find themselves having very different conversations (and reaching different conclusions) than they – or some other participant, or audience member, may think they are having. Confusion and misunderstanding become easier (and more likely) than any real exchange of information, problem solving, or consensus building effort.

Let’s use those cookies as an example… If I say to a friend “I had a couple tasty girl scout cookies today.” and their understanding of ‘a couple’ is quite specifically ‘2’, and two cookies is what I had, then we obviously understand each other clearly. On the other hand, if I used ‘a couple’ more loosely, to indicate some ‘acceptably low number of cookies, not further specified’ and my friend understands me to mean ‘2’, and what I actually ate was an entire box of those cookies, we no longer have a meeting of the minds on simply how many cookies I ate, or a number of later possible topics of conversation… like… weight-loss goals, and personal concerns about achieving them, or matters of self-control and the relative ease or difficulty of maintaining it… Hmmmm… someone important once suggested I use ‘simple, clear language’ to be more easily understood.  I see the wisdom of it… but damn, there are sooo many fancy lovely words… I’d hate to see all those wasted! 😉

It’s a Monday, time to move on from words to numbers… I didn’t get much sleep last night, and find myself now both fatigued and distracted by things more important to me, than to the world, but the work day is here and I’ve a limited window of reliable alertness ahead of me, and putting the focus on the work at hand is now the thing. It’s a good Monday, though, a good day in general. I am, for now, enjoying my experience.