Random, annoying thoughts

Contemporary Slavery
The Jewish story of the exodus from Egypt (you know, Pharaoh, Moses, Charlton Heston....) main scheme is how the Hebrews freed themselves from slavery. One of the most famous songs of the Passover night is "We were slaves" (and now we're free, etc.)  Let's leave the discussion if this is a historical truth or not for another occasion.  Today, since I can't wait for Passover, I'll ask the question:  (Assuming we were indeed enslaved) Are we really not enslaved any more?  And just to clarify, by "we" I mean the human race, not just the Jews.  And just to clarify a little more, this discussion has nothing to do with neither religion nor the old testament.  It has, however, everything to do with slavery.  Self inflicted slavery:

• We carry cell phones at all times.  We make ourselves available to anybody at any time (during driving too, DUH!).  We keep checking it all the time as if the world is coming to an end.
• We jump to every ring, every chat, every tweet.  (Why do we do that?  Why people can call us whenever THEY want?  When it's not the ring of a phone, do we let people interrupt what we do?  Why are we allowing ourselves to be enslaved by a phone ring?)  We're all little Pavlov dogs, aren't we?
  
• We're enslaving ourselves to drinks and cigarettes and drugs and...well, anything that WE THINK will make us feel good.
• Some of us spend more time at work as if we're married to it.

These are just a few examples from our daily lives.  The list is long, but you get the idea.  We're enslaving ourselves to these and many more - out of our own will.  And we're forgetting ourselves.  We forget how to set ourselves free again, don't we?  And we completely forgot how to to be enslaved in the first place. 


Condoms
And almost on the same subject:  Why are we keep walking into a brick wall?  Why are we:

• Eating so unhealthy as to harm ourselves, only to realize years later what we did to our bodies  and try to "correct" it with medication?  Wouldn't make more sense to eat healthier to begin with?
• Similarly, abusing our bodies with inappropriate (not to say dangerous and stupid) activities, break our own backs and knees, only to start taking care of ourselves AFTER the body is already injured?  Wouldn't it make more sense to start yoga and gentle exercise in a younger age?  Wouldn't it make sense to take care of our body rather than abuse it? 
  
• Going out to wars, kill, get killed - only to come to an agreement after much hostility?  Wouldn't it make more sense to talk it out in the first place?  (I know, I know:  what if we tried to talk and it didn't work?  Ah, of course: let's kill them all.)
• Getting sick - since we live so unhealthy - and then take medication to try and make things better?  Wouldn't it make more sense to strengthen the immune system to begin with?
• Putting ourselves through all the possible stress in the world?  Wouldn't it make more sense....complete on your own...
• Going into debt just to work the rest of our life to get out of?  Wouldn't it make more sense....complete on your own...
• Pollute the world and then try to clean it up?  Wouldn't it make more sense....complete on your own...

The list is long.  Again, you get the idea.  We, humans, are doing so many things that, looking back at them, make absolutely no sense.  And then we try to change things and sometimes, I mean more often than not, it's too late to roll the wheel back.  The damage was done.  And the incredible thing is that we don't learn from our experience.  We keep walking into the brick wall.

Isn't it so?  When we're young, we think we know better, nah?  We eat, we drink, we party.  It'll be ok, we say, we know what we're doing.  You live only once.  You've gotta enjoy every minute of it.  Whatever happens happens.  Off course, we don't have the slightest clue what we say at the time.  Suddenly we wake up at age 40-50-60 with high cholesterol and a bad back and a beer belly.  And suddenly this sentence, you live only once, looks too remote, not applicable.  Now we have a family that we love.  We're not prepared (I mean, careless) to leave this world like we were when we were young.  In the best case scenario we "wake up" from our childish illusions an try to take care of ourselves.  But it is often too late.  Or at least we convince ourselves it's too late.  (Because really, I don't think it's EVER too late.  With enough will power one we can change our lives at any age.)

It's true that sometimes we don't have a choice.  Sometime a certain illness if falling on us or we get into financial difficulties - none of which is in our control.  (And sometimes your child is born with severe disabilities.) I'm not talking about such cases.  Only on these cases that we neglect to prevent in the first place.
So you can relax.  This paragraph is not really about condoms.  Sorry for the disappointment.  No juicy, sexy stuff here. This is a mostly PG rated blog, with occasional spikes to PG-17.5.   I just used it as a metaphor for many of the things in life we should [maybe] try to prevent and we don't.

I know:  I sound like a cheap preacher.  Oh well, I'm a lousy author.  But down below the used and beat-down words lies the truth.  Each one of us knows his/her own little truth.  And really, I'm not here to preach.  As far as I'm concern feel free to send your life straight down the drain.  Feel free to eat unhealthy and talk while driving and stress yourself out.  I'm ok with that.  No need to change anything, really.  Disregard everything you read.  Sorry for the waste of time.