Discipline

My idea of discipline is eating one peanut butter sandwich for lunch instead of three. Having one whiskey in the evening instead of four. If I can eat less than 3000 calories a day, I’m disciplined. If I can hold my daily potato chip consumption to half a bag, I’m disciplined. If I write a page a week, I’m disciplined. In other words, I have no discipline whatsoever—never have, never will. Yet I have this dream of living a life in which my foibles, my weaknesses, my perfect inability to control my impulses, give way to a new man: A Man Principled in the Art of Denial. A man so self-regulating that he can go a week on a slice of Velveeta and a Perrier. A man who shuns the carnal in favor of protracted sessions with the Koran, ignores the pangs of alcoholism for a cold glass of jus d'orange. A man who favors a gloveless ascent of the Eiger to eating a quart of Ben and Jerry’s during the two-hour finale of The Bachelorette. This is the man I seek to be: the man for whom self-denial is a way of life and self-discipline the road to salvation. I'll get started on this new program any day now. As soon as I get a little discipline.