Last evening while idly scrolling through my news feed, I came across a headline, “What the French Cancer Doctor Ordered: Eat frites. Drink wine. Have sex.” It was published by www.thetimes.co.uk/ and immediately drew my interest since there is hardly a time when doctors advocate such a hedonistic lifestyle. I clicked on the article and was able to read the first couple paragraphs before The Times asked me to buy a subscription or agree to a one-week trial which leads to buying a prescription anyway, so why don’t they just say what they really mean? Anyway, he wrote encouraging persons, through his recently published book to live, love, have friendships, and be joyful. This doctor was speaking my language.
We are all guilty of forgetting to live and enjoy life. There are some of us, busy running from here to there, efforting, trying to achieve the material success that society says would bring us satisfaction and as a result, we forget the golden keys of living, we forget to eat frites, drink wine and have sex.
Then there is another group of us, those who have decided that achieving spiritual enlightenment is the goal and so we start walking that part, giving up everything that made this life worth living, believing that one needs to live an ascetic lifestyle to achieve this enlightenment. We decide that we have to ‘let go’; we ought to practice desirelessness; we need to be fully empty, so we become extreme seekers. As a result, we become unable to function and have a normal life, a life that encourages the human in us to eat frites, drink wine and have sex.
I believe that the best road to follow is the one that allows for a little bit of everything. We did not come here to escape being here and not sharing in the earth experience, nor did we come here to entirely disconnect from the greater part of who we are, the part that connects us to our Source, we came here to live it up a little, love a lot, be happy and to eat frites, drink wine and have sex.
Note: The book by Professor David Khyat, Arretez de Vous Priver is published in French and I intend to lean hard on those two years of advanced-level French I struggled through many moons ago, and get to reading his book since I love eating frites, drinking wine and having sex though not necessarily in that order.