“If you have found honey, eat only enough for you, lest you have your fill of it and vomit it.” Proverbs 25:16
We have a tendency to overindulge. It’s systemic in our culture. Consider the portion size at your favorite restaurant. We call it value – ironic, isn’t that? – and eat (or drink, or spend, or wear, or use) it all because it’s there. And besides, to not do it would be wasteful, wouldn’t it? After all I paid for it.
A generation ago, the post depression children, were taught to eat everything on their plate & they passed that lesson along. There was a time when food was scarce. Portion size meant the opposite then of what it does today. Consumption was a matter of survival, not a vice of excess.
Does anyone actually need to be told that too much is not good for us? It’s self evident, yet we make irrational decisions all the time, often to gratify our most elemental desires.
I like to think that I’ve got plenty of self control, but put me in front of a big sizzling steak & an open bottle of red wine and all of a sudden it doesn’t matter that I’m trying to lose weight and eat healthy. It is a difficult thing to set limits on ourselves.
True power, greatness and nobility lie not in what we can amass for ourselves or what we control or even what resources we have at our disposal. True power is found when one can control oneself.