Excerpt: Dialogue With Death II

Or take exercise. Not even Shreya would deny that there is a certain satisfaction in just sitting. Once you get used to it, the mere thought of movement becomes unpleasant. If your doctor suggests ‘moderate exercise’, your skin begins to crawl.

“Why bother?” Preya whispers. “What does it matter? You’re not going out for the Olympics. Your level of fitness is just right for your particular lifestyle.” Unfortunately, your arteries are likely to feel the same way. “Shut it down!” Even the blood starts to flow more slowly. Finally it will strain your heart simply to climb a flight of stairs. “You’re courting a heart-attack,” says Shreya. “Get started on a fitness program before it’s too late!”

Preya has a well-developed sales pitch for almost any product. He carries a little briefcase of graphs, tables, and other convincing multimedia presentations to bolster all his arguments. “The evidence is insubstantial,” he says, pointing to his charts. “There is no controlled study to show that lung cancer or emphysema is caused by smoking. If the mortality rate for these diseases is higher among those who smoke, so what? Most of those people probably would have died even if they didn’t smoke.” “Sugar is just like any other carbohydrate – a great source of energy. Would you say energy is bad? Brush your teeth afterwards and you won’t have anything to worry about.”

In fact, Preya can be quite daring. He is not afraid of the Surgeon General; he flaunts that august gentleman’s warning’s on every box of cigarettes he sells. If the law requires him to print “Caution” in letters at least two feet high on every billboard, he will print them three feet high. Nothing can shake his self-confidence – and not without reason. He knows what he can sell. “Sure,” he agrees, “the docs say they may kill you. Sure, if you’re pregnant they may stunt the size and intelligence of your child. Let’s be realistic: do you have a choice? Don’t you have to do what you like? Come on, try ‘em. You’ll like ‘em!”

Against all this, Shreya has a difficult time. Preya comes to our door with his bright smile and a big button on his lapel saying “Alive with pleasure! Come to where the flavor is!” Who can hear mild-mannered Miss Shreya, standing behind and saying quietly, “Turn the button over and see what it says: ‘Come to where the cancer is. Alive with pleasure, dying in pain’”?

In fact, we don’t want to hear Shreya. We think she wants to keep us from the things that make life enjoyable. Her wares are not unattractive at the outset – good health, security, peace of mind. We would like to have them, but they are not fun to have; it is painful to think of giving something up to gain them. Only when we lack these things do we realize that without them, life is unhappy indeed.

[Contd. in future postings]
From the book Dialogue with Death, by Eknath Easwaran; reproduced without permission.