The Temptations

As a young child I remember listening, with an admittedly limited comprehension but with sufficient understanding to feel a combination of respect and intrigue, to my family members as they discussed the many exploits of my grandpa, who had retired, bought himself a mobile home, and begun travelling the country apparently solely to visit as many spas as possible, which was a really just a mechanism for hooking up with as many older women as possible. I remember he married three or four times, I think, since he turned sixty.

The interesting thing to me as a child, and still today, is that my family members always seemed to exercise this special moral code in their consideration of his actions. Whereas were it anyone else they would have judged, condemned, and generally mentioned not a few religious platitudes--for whatever reason what my grandpa did was somehow admirable in their sight. He was, "making the best of his time," "filling his last days with happiness"; and so on and so forth.

For my family members, the satisfaction of their own desires was a matter of severe religious taboo; being part of a conservative religious culture as they were. As a child I was strictly indoctrinated in the religious decree of abstinence in all things, the mandate against desire. Yet apparently, given the above example, I knew even as a young child that there was a limit, even to this taboo. The onset of death, this was a spectre even more terrifying to them than the scorn of their society; and so they recognized that my grandpa had passed out of the domain within which they dwelt, into a special domain lacking their rules.

A friend of mine said to me the other day, "I don't appreciate temptation." (She was not referring to me, just to be clear.) I thought about that statement for a while. Temptation is only desire masked by the veil of social taboo. Of course, her statement was a negative, meaning "I take offense at temptation," not merely a neutrality. I however would say "I appreciate desire in all its forms," and it seems that as I grow older, I even hold a special appreciation for temptation, for it is desire that battles against our limitations, that entices us to throw aside our fears and embrace the joys of life, while we yet have time to do so.

So, I suppose I would say to those who read this, perhaps you should embrace the temptations around you, rather than fleeing them. There may be a day when you wish you had.