Good afternoon and welcome to the 20th annual April Fools Day observance! These just keep going, huh? I still remember the day the idea came to me; I think it was April… yes, it was April 1st. I thought “Life is full of paradoxes, and people keep trying to solve them rather than live them. I’ll get everyone together to share and appreciate the built-in tensions in life.” And so it started! But the thing is, I never made a plan for when and how this should all end. I mean, not when this particular party should end-- that’s easy, it ends when you get tired or I get tired or, more likely, Naomi gets tired. I don’t know when the observance as a whole should end. Every year it only exists if I make it happen, by writing a speech, inviting everyone, and making veggie chili. So… I guess I’ll just do these until I die, and maybe someone else will do them, or not? Can an indefinite plan be a plan? Know what, I’ll figure this out later, like tomorrow, or someday after that. For now, I’ll stop musing and start the speech.
My topic today is: The Folly of Moderation. As the tradition goes, I’ll start out critiquing moderation and end by endorsing it, thus hopefully confusing you and making myself seem even more foolish.
Moderation is all about striking a balance between starting and stopping any given activity. You can only eat pizza in moderation by starting to eat it and then stopping before it’s too much. You’re thinking, “That’s just common sense!” To which I say, screw you, if it’s so obvious, how come I’m so bad at it?! Anyhow-- there are two opposites to moderation, both of which make more sense to me: excess and abstinence. So, for the critical portion of this speech, I’ll explain why moderation is dumb, and why excess and abstinence are clearly superior.
I’ll start by praising excess, and really there’s no such thing as too much praise for that! All of my favorite things grow, continue, expand-- basically, I love epic things. Why settle for the 3-minute studio Dark Star when you can listen to the 47-minute live one from 5/11/72? Why go to a concert when you can go to a festival? Last year I biked from Pikesville to Annapolis and back; it was epic, by which I mean very long and very fun. When you have the capacity to enjoy more, then more is better. This is why I’ve never understood when people say things like, “This is too sweet” or “This pizza has too much cheese.” A moderate amount of something is less, and despite what they tell you, less is not more, that’s why less and more are opposites-- don’t be foolish! So, moderation is less fun than excess, or to quote the words of (John Barlow as sung by) Bob Weir: “Too much of everything is just enough.”
But enough about excess-- let’s talk about abstinence. In our current culture, the word is sexually charged (or rather, non-sexually charged), but I’m using it here to talk about any activity one might avoid. While abstinence is less fun than both excess and moderation, I appreciate it because it’s simple. That’s the appeal of “Just say no.” As someone who loves making structures and rules for myself, I appreciate the simplicity of an straightforward rule. When I decide to abstain from something, then great, it’s off the menu, and I’ll focus on what I can do instead. I’ve revelled in my love for abstinence in different ways-- keeping Shabbat in my teens, being a vegetarian in my 20s, and that 1000 days of sobriety in my 30s. I find comfort and identity in restraint-- I know who I am through well-drawn and well-respected boundaries.
Are you seeing what makes excess and abstinence so appealing to me? They’re simple-- excess is “Just Do It” and abstinence is “Just Say No.” The good things are good, so keep doing them. The bad things are bad, so just stay away.
And there’s really nothing wrong with excess… if you’re doing it right. People talk about doing things ad nauseam, meaning doing it until you’re sick. But let’s talk about ad libitum, meaning doing it according to your pleasure, which can mean doing something on and on, assuming that you just never get sick of it. So what if I don’t feel done yet? Why stop now when it’s going so well? What’s one more?
So. Let’s talk about being bipolar. The diagnosis shows up differently for different people, so I’ll only speak about myself. At the same time, you might relate to some of my experiences, even if you don’t share my diagnosis.
A few years ago I was diagnosed with bipolar ii, a condition on the bipolar spectrum with hypomanic rather than full manic episodes-- basically, I have periods of pathologically heightened energy which aren’t as long or disruptive as in folks with bipolar i. But what is “pathologically heightened energy”? The key term here is pathological-- in psychotherapy, something is pathological if it causes enough distress and dysfunction. Being excited is great. Being so excited that I lose my ability to return to calm, not so great.
Psychiatrist Patrick Burke describes bipolar in a way that really speaks to me. He calls it a “disorder of motivational systems and their regulation.” He talks about how bipolar folks live with a “heightened drive toward goals, achievement, and reward, even when there are negative consequences.” That sounds about right.
So-- now let’s talk about drugs. Being reward-sensitive makes me more inclined towards using what I’ll call experience-enhancing materials. Drugs are the most obvious example, though I’d say that music also fits this description. I often use music as a background mood-enhancing tool-- why do something silently when I can have some additional stimulation carrying the mood? Drugs can also work in this background fashion, contributing additional pleasure and painlessness to such grueling activities as dancing, writing, socializing, and even watching TV. Trust me-- back in 2014, when FXX had their 11-day “Every Simpsons Ever” marathon, I was sober at the time, and watching 12 straight hours of TV was definitely more of a challenge without performance-enhancing drugs. But somehow I managed to fit it in.
Drugs are also helpful at every stage of an energy cycle. If I’m having a good time and want to stay up, there’s a drug for that. If I’m ready to crash but can’t, there’s a drug for that. Caffeine maintains momentum. Weed cushions the collapse. With the right self-medication, I don’t get sick of the cycle, and then there’s no such thing as ad nauseam. Even a hangover is pleasant with the right meds. Excess is great, if you can get away with it, meaning, continue to function because of and/or in spite of it. There’s no need for moderation when you’re moving gracefully with the highs and the lows.
Why, then, would I bother to affirm moderation, given how foolish and unnecessary it is?
First, a practical but shallow answer: I grudgingly admit that optimizing an experience might involve doing less. On any given night, more is better, but sometimes looking back the next morning, less would’ve been better. Moderation comes out on top if you’re judging by the average of good feelings over time. Fewer highs but also fewer lows.
But that’s about looking backwards, but what about moderation in the present moment? Well, sometimes the right balance of elements in an experience can enhance it. For example-- Though I do enjoy biking while listening to music while voice-dictating philosophical thoughts into my phone, there is also a certain speed of biking at a certain volume of music and a certain quality of thought worth jotting down for later-- there’s a balance that actually makes it the most enjoyable (and safe). When everything goes to 11, the balanced experience is lost. This is why I follow recipes when I cook-- I shouldn’t just put a heaping tablespoon of everything into everything.
Annoyingly, moderation requires way more self-awareness and more self-monitoring-- I have to be a connoisseur of experience in order to know what goes with what, what’s too much, what’s too little, when to start, and when to stop.
But now let’s get psychological-- I want to understand why I avoid stopping doing things I enjoy. This brings me to a deeper, existential answer: Compulsive excess is a refusal to reconcile a seemingly limitless appetite with a definitely limited self, life, and world. I’ll say that again (repeat the previous sentence). This is very humbling, and it points out why I need to back down from my “always more” mentality. Because moderation is about living life on life’s terms.
So let’s talk about “life’s terms.” We live in the present but are angled toward the future; this makes the experience of “enough” complicated and elusive. Do I have “enough” food? Yes, for now, but for the future, I don’t know. There might not be enough later, and that possibility makes me want to take more in now. Have I written enough? I mean, I’ve written all I can for today, but if there’s no tomorrow then I better get it all in now while I can. Have I had enough, which is to say, am I satisfied? Satisfaction, if attained, is still fleeting-- Even if you can get it, after time passes, it’s gone again. Truly in the ultimate sense, you can’t get no satisfaction.
To be satisfied is to feel “full”, and full is a hard target to hit. Maimonides, a medieval Rabbi and doctor, advises people to stop eating when they are “3/4 full.” But when the heck is that? It’s simpler to eat until I feel totally full, which is to say, “overfull.” Overfull isn’t quite the same as satisfaction, but it definitely avoids the not-enoughness I associate with dissatisfaction. Excess is an attempt to feel utterly certain that my appetite has been satisfied. To put it another way, I’ll know I’ve had enough when I can’t stand any more, literally or figuratively.
Finally, literally and figuratively, let’s talk about death and fullness. Just as those who’ve had a full meal are ready to leave the table, someone who’s had a full life would thus be ready for death. But-- are we ever full? If we love life, if we love ourselves and the people around us, can we ever simply have enough? It would seem that someone who loves life cannot get full, and therefore cannot get satisfaction. If we have a limitless appetite for life, then we are always greedy for more, and we’ll never feel done.
This is what makes moderation so odious, and also so wise: Moderation is a reckoning with an overactive appetite, a recognition that satisfaction is illusory, and coming to terms with the fact our bodies, minds, capacities, and life spans all hit limits. And, as I’ve said before (in 2014, The Folly of Self-Acceptance), to grow we have to expand our boundaries but also respect our limitations.
Weirdly enough, the myth of Sisyphus bears this lesson for us. Folks may be familiar with the nature of his punishment, to roll a boulder up a hill, only for it to roll back down, and then to start again-- for eternity. But-- does anyone here remember why Sisyphus was being punished? (Anyone?) There are three different accounts, and in two of them he’s punished for trying to defeat or cheat death. Sisyphus, for his crimes against death, is condemned to push upwards and fall downwards for eternity. And, y’know, it kinda makes sense! He’s forced to go up and down, because he refused to let there be a stop. Wanting more life and refusing death leads to this incessant up and down cycle, and I find this highly relatable.
Moderation is a reckoning with our uncertain future and relative powerlessness to make the absolute most out of life. Moderation could be an act of faith that there will be more, that there is a future one can bank on. Or it’s the kind of faith in which one is simply open to what will be. Either way, it’s about letting go and letting be. There may never be enough. There will be waste. For the sake of health and balance, I may need to leave food on my plate. For the sake of a balanced life, I may need to allow for interruptions like death. I have to get better at endings.
The practices of moderation involve negative actions-- to stop, to take less, and to do fewer things at a time. And I’m learning; I’m working on it-- I’ve never taken more breaks in the course of writing one of these speeches than in writing this one-- most were to give my body a break from sitting, others were to give my mind a break from composing, and after the existential conclusion above, I took a break because it was just too emotionally overwhelming. I’ll hopefully keep working on this. I expect it to be a lifelong lesson in course correction.
Camus ends his essay on Sisyphus by saying that “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” No-- one must imagine Sisyphus taking a goddamn break.
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