Self Improvement is yet another job!

I’m all for people doing everything they can do to improve their lives, but as I age I have observed that self-improvement has become somewhat of an obsession in our culture. Learning to leave “Well enough alone” is a metaphor that meant something to my grandparents. Products geared towards making us look perfect have been permeating our society for years. I can’t believe how ridiculous some of it has become. I recently read about a new product that was developed to handle “stress sweat”. I guess sweat can now be categorized. You just can’t sweat you have to figure out what kind it is. Perhaps you have to hire a “sweat assessor”. After all the King and Queens used to have tasters for their food in case it was poisoned. Imagine how this could create a whole new line of work? After all there are a myriad of odors from different types of sweat. You could take your “assessor” wherever you go and have him give you his suggestion for which deodorant you need for any given moment. Staff meetings, confrontations with family, divorce sweat would be a great market, or a first date. What I find so amusing is that the company that introduced this idiotic product announced that it had been clinically tested. Do people really get involved in these studies and how are they done? Do you put a bunch of people in a room with a grizzly and then monitor their sweat glands? Or maybe you have them call one of the many companies that have voice mail to see if they ever get their problem resolved. i think that would create a lot more “stress sweat”then being with a grizzly.

I’m all for improving the human condition and giving us the opportunity to look, and feel great. But self-improvement has now become another job. How many hours a day must we spend trying to discern whether we ate the right amount of blueberries, ingested enough fiber, used the right shampoo for our hair type, or made sure our sheets and pillow cases are not infested with mites? Madison Avenue executives have been plotting for years to get us to think that we will not feel good about ourselves unless we buy something that will enhance how we look. And a lot of us have bought into it. I know I did, but finally I realized that often times I looked worse than when I started. So now I spend more time accepting who i am, which makes me sweat a whole lot less!