Our Steady Diet of Placebo Effects

What Do We Feed Ourselves?

You know that mindless foraging feeling? Where you stare spaced out into the insides of a fridge, freezer, cabinet, vending machine– doesn’t really matter, trying to figure out what will really satisfy your hunger?

You know for a fact the answer is NOT twenty handfuls of potato chips or a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream and yet…

It happens.

With full awareness we concede that something is better than nothing– that full and slightly nauseous is better than uncomfortably empty and afraid we’ll never find exactly what we’re looking for.

Which of course, we won’t. Not in the pantry.

We know the question.

What will feed our heart and soul, our desire to feel connected, passionate and alive? The answers just always seem so elusive. And we’re so conditioned to look for something concrete. A tangible thing or direction.

Black suede boots. Softer towels. A new town. More kale. A better career. Botox.

We know it’s all malarkey. Sort of. But maybe…

This is kind of how I feel about the pre-packaged blind optimism alternatives.

The… “Keep Calm and Carry On” “Chin Up”, “March Ahead”, “Think Pink”, “Look at the Bright Side” and other deadening platitudes.

They all feel fake. Like withered wrinkly kale.

Or the spun pink sugar nourishment of cotton candy.

Well yeah, okay, wouldn’t we all just do it, if it were indeed that simple?

This weekend our family watched an amazing movie called Tomorrowland, in which a young girl relays back to her father an old Cherokee parable he’d repeatedly told her growing up.

It is simple, yet profound.

Opens up choice through the lens of understanding the duality of human nature instead of being reductive about what we should do.

It goes like this.

A grandfather talks to his grandson. “There is a battle that goes inside everyone. It is between two wolves. One is the wolf of darkness and despair. The other is the wolf of light and hope.”

“Which one will win?” his grandson asks.

The elder answers, “The one you feed.”

There’s no Just Do It call to action. No overbearing command that suggests anything’s possible if we just put our mind to it. No bold assumptions about what we should be capable of.

Simply a quiet powerful observation of the struggle, to one degree or another, that goes on inside all of us, the reality of our human predicament and the ultimate power of choice.

It doesn’t end with feed hope.

Or save the wolf of light.

It seems to be championing the remarkable neuroplasticity of our brains, the incredible fortitude of our hearts and the courage of our spirit to know what will make it soar.