I fight the battle against the flesh—
To keep it in check—
To not “let myself go”—
To swim against the tide of a sloppy society
And live by good principle and wisdom
Rather than merely by fleshly desire
And convenience
And unvetted assumption.
I joke—not entirely facetiously—
That it is my goal to “die healthy”
Rather than to give myself over
To the toxic foods and the sedentary lifestyles
And whatever other vices there are
That rule the marketplace and culture alike.
And while I have neither mastered the battle
Nor thrown up my arms to defeat,
I have managed to discover
What seems to be a crucial
Conundrum of philosophy inside me.
On the one hand, I have
The rather inspiring idea that
With enough diligent practice,
I should be able
To train my mind such that
It will no longer desire
What is not best for me.
And on the other is
The rather deflating idea
That I must fight the good fight
Not once and for all
In one glorious episode,
But on every day that I breathe.
For even in the light of
Some noteworthy success,
I see that I am now still prone
In the day-to-day goings on
To stopping the caring,
And to giving into the temptations
That I have wished would have
Ceased their seduction by now.
And so, the great question is
Whether something is wrong with me
That they have not—
Or whether this is simply
The true nature of the struggle,
And whether the notion of no longer
Being tempted on this Earth
Is just a foolish fantasy—
For as long as I am here.
While the temptation does indeed
Seem to wane in some ways,
It never leaves me altogether—
Which makes me wonder
Where I ever got the notion
That it should.
Perhaps it was from
Some panderer in some pulpit?
Or as likely, from my own
Lazy imagination?
But whatever the source,
In these quiet moments
Of reflection on the matter,
I can reason that both ideas
Are true in part—
That there is some
Improvement of conviction and of desire
That comes from fighting the fight,
But that it must also be maintained
In the daily struggle.
