I buy too much food.

I observe this curiously without undue concern. The cost of the excess threatens neither the world’s balance nor our domestic treasury. A busy restaurant wastes as much in a night as I do in a year. I’m convinced this quirk is not symptomatic of deeper psychic tsuris, and if I’m wrong I don’t want to hear. It’s harmless, my extravagance, I assure myself, but also irksome. I know better. My overstuffed kitchen reproaches me. Just now blueberries tumbled from a plastic carton perilously perched on a crammed refrigerator shelf, forcing me to my knobby knees in parodic penance. How often, opening the refrigerator, had I cautioned myself, here was an “accident waiting to happen”? Did I respond to my warning by rearranging, discarding containers past their prime? That would have made sense, sparing me the otherwise ineluctable exertion of searching out blueberries hiding impishly beneath the dishwasher. I had the time, forewarning, and cognizance to know what I should do – this calculus wasn’t complex – but did I do it? Why did I overbuy in the first place (I’m in charge of provender in our household, Jane of organization)? Why didn’t I tidy our shelves before calamity struck (well, not calamity precisely – I exaggerate for comic effect)? Why do I act here and elsewhere contrary to common sense? T.S. Eliot didn’t have blueberries in mind when he wrote “After such knowledge, what forgiveness?” but he might have. I exasperate myself – but do I get handle on my waywardness, reassert order over my f—ing fickleness? Am I stupid? No! I’ve composed this paragraph syntactically (though it’s getting long). I am better than this. I know better. What’s going on!!!

My eyes roll sardonically remembering that popular Victorian patter:

“Invictus” Henley called his claptrap; unconquered. Hubris drips from its pores: “unconquerable soul,” “bloody but unbowed,” “captain of my soul.” Like fun he’s in charge of himself. If he’s human, he’s not even in charge of his blueberries!

Self-control is a dangerous human myth – dangerous because it fails to prepare us for the startling swerves actuality has in store. We no more steer our lives than passengers on a roller-coaster. We buckle in and whoosh, off we go on the thrilling, sometimes nauseating dips and swoops prepared for us by mischievous chance. I did not make my life, my life made me; it’s my job to make the best of what I got. I did not choose my parents, moment, body, genes, emotions, kids, you, the accidents of love or career. Arriving at a crossroads I went left or right – or maybe that decision too was ordained. I’m not even writing this sentence, though it’s my fingers typing; I’m amanuensis for forces I can neither detect nor comprehend.

Morality should blossom from such a premise. Be humble, for heaven’s sake: greet gladness as a gift, adversity as a test, forgive others and yourself for your failure to fulfill dreams, while striving to mend your ways. Smile at your silly pride. Gather your spilled blueberries and try to buy less when you shop next, though it’s hard.