How’s Your Energy Level?

The marketplace is now flooded with energy drinks. The latest entry is the juicing of Pepsi (Pepsi-Max), now with even more caffeine (69 mg/12oz.). Between the ads on TV for drugs that we need to talk to our doctors about, and the drugs that are prevalent in our beverages, we are slowly becoming a drug induced culture. Energy is everywhere. Energy is in the sunlight. Energy is in the air we breathe. Energy is in the wind that blows. And energy is quite prevalent in our bodies through the constant chemical processes that are at work within us.

Now, we may not always feel so energetic. We get tired. As we age we get tired more frequently. We may feel fatigued because of certain foods we have ingested (or the sheer volume of food we’ve ingested). We may feel exhausted because our hearts or other parts of our bodies are not working efficiently. We may be bushed because we work too many hours (in France they try to keep their work week at a maximum of 35 hours, and take 5 weeks of vacation each year). We may feel stressed because of financial worries generated by medical bills (see the new Moore film Sicko). We may feel the need for an energy boost. And the convergence of drugs and beverage companies is there to address that need.

Beverages like Red Bull, Venom, Adrenaline Rush, 180, ISO Sprint, and now Pepsi Max, make it possible for us to mask the natural causes of our low energy (and let’s not forget coffee, with a Starbucks on every corner in every major city in America). We can fool ourselves into productivity rather than taking time to rest and recuperate. We can drug ourselves into speeding up, when our bodies are crying for us to slow down. We can induce a euphoric state in order to postpone the effects of sadness, mild depression, or just plain exhaustion.

The first sentence in M. Scott Peck’s seminal work The Road Less Traveled is only three words long. He writes, “Life is difficult.” He goes on to clarify, “This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths.* It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult – once we truly understand and accept it – then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.” (*The first of the “Four Noble Truths” which Buddha taught was “Life is suffering.”).

Slowing down, and looking within to discover the truth about our selves and the reality of our humanity, will provide for us a natural energy that cannot be synthesized by chemical additives. We begin where we are in any given moment. We cannot start where we are not. Energy will flow from the truth we inhabit regarding our selves, and the world around us. To see our selves and the world as that great mystery that we call God sees us, this is the genesis of energy, and the beginning of the wisdom to use it.

                                                                                                - Pastor Vance Toivonen