I always order a Double-Double Protein Style at In-N-Out, my favorite burger at my favorite burger restaurant. There are a million ways to fix a hamburger, and the Waffle House can make them in an almost infinite variety of ways, but the In-N-Out Protein Style Double Double is all I ever want, that is, when I want a burger, which I want far more than I have, as weight and diet have become issues over the past several years.
But this blog entry has nothing to do with burgers, but In-N-Out does. Not the restaurant, but mental health, happiness, and contentment.
Out
This is all the stuff that I can’t control. It’s outside my purview. I can’t take down Vivek Ramaswamy’s vile advertisement, maligning his opponent, Amy Acton, for governor of Ohio. (I wrote about it in the previous blog entry). I can’t unelect Donald Trump. I can’t prevent a man whose M.O. focuses on cruelty, misogyny, and hate to incorporate better values into his psyche. There’s nothing I can do to change that. I can’t lower inflation, an issue that has created discontent in voters who are nine days away from the mid-term elections. I can’t make the Iran war go away, and I can’t bring back to life more than a hundred little iranian schoolgirls who were killed in the first day of the war by a wayward “Patriot” missle fired by the US. I can’t make my 401K go back to where it was last January. I’ve given up following it, as its decline over the past couple of months would not only sadden me but dissuade me from recognizing that it’s just another “out”, something I can’t really control.
In
This is what I can control, the stuff that makes up who I am, how I feel, how I behave, how I respond, how I treat both myself and other people. It’s the part that remembers, “This, too, will pass” when it comes to the “Out” part. The “In” reminds me that issues, like the black smudges on my prints from my Canon printer, the cracked rib I suffered last week, the extra pounds I’ve inadvertently added to my frame, are “First World Problems,” not even worthy of mentioning in the face of the serious issues from the “Out” side. It’s the “In” that reminds me that beginning the day believing that this day will be the best day of my life, and second, that I’m the one who’s responsible to make that happen. The “Out” doesn’t count; the “In” does.