I was sitting in Starbucks today and made this list:
What do I accept from my upbringing? The importance of God, ethics, religion, community, books, education, travel, friends, not swearing, color-blindness. I also continue to abstain by habit from meat, nicotine, alcohol, and caffeine, just as the Seventh-Day Adventists do.
What do I reject from my upbringing? Singlets, pajamas, Jesus, Christianity, Seventh-Day Adventism, the religious value of abstention from meat, nicotine, alcohol and caffeine, the 80-10-10 diet (of 80% carbs, 10% protein, 10% fat, instead I aim for the Zone Diet) belief that if you just try hard enough and discipline yourself you can do anything (as opposed to looking at how you’re doing things and how your will and sensory perceptions might be corrupted), focusing on the next life more than this one, withdrawing from the world and living on the margins, a distaste for urban areas, pop music, movies, plays, novels, chewing gum, ritual and man-made traditions, doctors, psychology.
