Take it or leave it

Everything is not a disease. Even if you hyphenate it, and suggest that everything is or leads to dis-ease, it isn't accurate. I have decided that I look for others who can (in their adult maturities) "take it or leave it." A man who can take a drink or not take a drink, at will, or who can attend or not attend an AA meeting, who may feel a duty to it, but who can distance himself from the cultish aspects of "the program," and not need it, either. Who has self-determination with or without it, with or without that drink or those six drinks, who pays in hangover, not in housing and divorce, a moderate perhaps. Alcohol is not a disease. It is a beverage and solvent. Prune juice is not a disease. It is a beverage and solvent. Wanting your old boyfriend to come back to you is not a disease; it is a decision. Wanting to go to your church is a goal, a position, a decision. Voting for Obama is not a disease; it is a viewpoint, a set of wishes. Walking in the rain is not a disease. Sustaining damage might be a disease. This is as innocent as contracting cancer, which is a disease. The disease caused by sustaining damage is trauma; the body reacts. The mind is part of the body. The body is part of the mind. The self is part of the mind. The heart is part of the body. The heart-body-mind live inside the decisions. The decisions are adjustable. I am tired of hearing that everything is a disease. It is a repudiation of religion that produces that error. To be self-representing, one might repudiate religion without abandoning science. Love is a decision.

Grandfather, George A. Bogle (1892-1962)