Tag: vice

Vice Buster

Where’s the sheepskin?

My pulse started racing as I scanned the room for it. I needed it.

I never slept without this sheepskin. It sat atop my pillow in my bed at home. It was packed in my bag whenever I spent an overnight away.

But now, on this overnight trip, it was nowhere to be found. My parents had somehow forgotten to pack it.

And now, I had two options. Stay up all night or put my head directly on the pillowcase.

I was committed to Option 1 for a while. Option 2 was too terrifying.

But eventually, I got groggy. And my resistance faded.

I felt the cool, crisp linen of the pillowcase against the back of my head. And soon I was fast asleep.

The Peanuts cartoon series features many iconic characters.

But one stands out above the rest – to me at least.

Linus Van Pelt.

Linus is a brilliant child who can easily explain scientific or philosophical concepts. His words make the other characters wiser, and they make the cartoon reader feel more enlightened too.

Yet, Linus also tends to suck his thumb like a toddler. And he carries a blanket with him wherever he goes.

This duality is rare in the Peanuts universe. Snoopy might be the only other character with such complexity.

Still, Linus is not unique. Far from it.

At any given moment, there are hundreds of millions of Linus Van Pelt protégés in all corners of our nation. You can find them in school classrooms, on playgrounds, and anywhere else kids gather.

This is no accident. It’s by design. Our design.

We lift up our children, highlighting their earliest moments of brilliance and encouraging more of it. Like a coach training an Olympic pole vaulter, we set the bar high, and then raise it ever higher.

But we also hold down our children, infantilizing them every chance we get. We let them carry around a blanket or suck their thumb until kingdom come. Because the alternative is too distressing – for both children and parents.

We’d rather not see our perfect, brilliant children crying in terror because we took away their creature comforts. And we’d rather not acknowledge that our children are growing up, and primed to turn the page on how we see them now.

So, we let them be Linus. We encourage them to be Linus – for as long as they can be.

This choice might seem inconsequential in the moment. But it carries a long shadow.

You see, the Linus model adds something toxic into the minds of the next generation. Namely, the concept of vices.

The longer children are allowed to hang onto their blanket, their stuffed animal, or their Hot Wheels toy, the more intractable it becomes. Children no longer treat the item like a companion on life’s journey; the item becomes a convenient escape instead.

We eventually do outgrow our blankets, our stuffed animals, our Hot Wheels toys. But as we morph into adolescents and adults, we never can shake the reliance on a convenient escape.

So, we turn to alcohol, to gambling, to excessive sugar, or to a whole host of other grown-up vices. Like Linus, we use these things to hide from the difficulties of the world. But unlike Linus, we have a responsibility to face those difficulties. After all, they won’t simply go away if we turn away from them.

Shirking our responsibility leaves us up a creek without a paddle. And the world suffers for it.

Make no mistake, the Linus model is not a viable one.

Vices are far from harmless. They must be rooted out.

When my family returned from our overnight trip, the sheepskin was on my pillow. Right where my parents had left it while packing for our travels.

I lay my head on the sheepskin, feeling its familiar warmth. And I quickly dozed off.

But once I awoke, a profound revelation came over me.

I didn’t need this item to sleep. The world of sheepskin-less pillows had turned out not to be so terrifying. And even if there were some frights awaiting me down the road, I had what I needed within me to face them. An inanimate object wasn’t going to save me.

I tossed the sheepskin aside and put my head back on the pillowcase. My Linus days were over.

In the decades that followed, I did pick up some vices. But they were all minor flings, rather than committed relationships.

I never let vices get their hooks into me. And when I felt their sharp edges digging into my skin, I shook them off.

Eventually, I started to make a sport of it. While some would cast off unhealthy habits for New Year’s or for Lent, I took pride in ridding myself of them for life.

So, away went McDonald’s, and Dr Pepper, and Jack Daniel’s. Whatever pleasures they gave me in the moment paled from what they would cost me over the long run.

I resolved to face life’s roller coaster with a clear mind and a clean bill of health. And for a time, my sacrifices to this end were the story.

But then life got hard.

A global pandemic hit. My career shifted. My social circle evolved.

I returned to competitive running, only for injuries to tear me apart. I managed to balance my books, only for a shift in the economy to leave me swimming upstream again.

I had every excuse to turn the clock back. To return to my old vices to dull the pain, and to provide me reassurance.

But I left my vices behind, favoring select indulgences instead. The occasional bakery sweet. The more-than-occasional expletive. The daily cup of coffee – black, no sugar – to keep me extra alert.

I wasn’t cowering from that north wind. I was turning into it and letting its bitter sting wash over my face.

These challenges weren’t going to define me. No, that was my story to write.

The Peanuts story effectively ended in 2000, when its cartoonist died. Yet the Linus-ification of society persists.

Indeed, vices are intertwined in our societal ecosystem. There are whole product lines, networks of manufacturing plants, and even a desert oasis devoted to them.

So much of what we cling to is not harmful on its own. But when we ask it to be our salvation, our sanctuary, our beacon of reassurance, we dig ourselves a hole we can’t ever climb out of.

We can do better.

We can take each new challenge as a moment of truth. We can remind ourselves that the courage to meet the moment lies deep within us – and that only we can coax it to the surface.

Once we recognize that truth for what it is, the choice should become clearer.

Do we run and hide from what’s in our midst? Or do we dig our heels in and face it head-on?

The first road feeds vices, exponentially tightening their grip over us. The second road starves vices, redefining them as indulgences.

I’m committed to that second road. Are you?

The Safety Net Vice

I was starving.

All around me, options abounded to quell my hunger. Just about any cuisine I would possibly desire — all available within my hotel complex.

I started perusing menus and checking wait times. But I quickly realized there was a significant problem.

For I was in Las Vegas — the land of $50 steaks and $25 burgers. And those options wouldn’t fit within the contours of my Per Diem.

For those uninitiated with business travel, the Per Diem is a daily flat rate for meals. It’s set by the United States government but paid out by companies to their employees.

The Per Diem is meant to level the playing field. It aims to set a benchmark for how much companies should expect to reimburse.

Normally, the Per Diem is a relatively fair proxy for meal costs. Maybe not a one-to-one match. But at least in the ballpark.

Yet, this was not the case in Las Vegas.

And so, I was left to determine the value of my starvation. Was it worth paying a bunch of my own money for the privilege of my nourishment? Or should I go without, in hopes of being made whole financially?

I chose the second option.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

This advice is practically gospel. For it’s the truth.

I experienced this truth firsthand during my misadventures in the desert. Unsatiated hunger has a strange way of driving home hard lessons.

But the no free lunch principle goes much deeper than my own foibles. It strikes at the heart of the Per Diem system itself.

Yes, it’s hard to find anyone who’s truly a fan of the Per Diem as it exists today. Many feel that it should be increased, or that companies should cover expenses on top of the set limits.

Such sentiments are understandable. Who wouldn’t want to avoid the mental gymnastics I went through in Las Vegas?

But this desire for a kinder Per Diem system misinterprets its purpose.

After all, the Per Diem is not a government handout. And even if it were, we would pay into that handout in the form of hefty taxes.

By contrast, the Per Diem is motivational tool. It’s something that incentivizes us to take our work on the road — and incur related costs — by recouping some of that spending.

The Per Diem isn’t designed to help us live high on the hog. It’s meant to help us work with what we’ve got.

But in doing so, it opens a whole other can of worms.

Many Texans know the legend of Judge Roy Bean.

The 19th century saloon keeper also served as the Justice of the Peace in Val Verde County. He branded himself as The Only Law West of the Pecos [River], often adjudicating from his saloon.

Val Verde County was part of the Texas frontier back then. And the law in that part of the world was open to some degree of interpretation. Judge Roy Bean espoused his flavor of it, and his work became Wild West legend.

Judge Roy Bean is long gone. And so is the world he lived in.

Indeed, modern-day Texas is governed by a series of uniform laws. Legislative codes that look the same in Mentone (population 22) as they do in Houston (population 2.3 million).

And perhaps the most notorious of these laws are the state’s liquor regulations.

For those uninitiated, Texans can only buy packaged hard liquor — such as bourbon or rum — from liquor stores. Those liquor stores must remain closed on Sundays. And on all other days, they cannot open earlier than 10 AM or close after 9 PM.

Liquor stores could keep even shorter hours, of course. But in all my years traversing the Lone Star State, I’ve yet to find one that wasn’t open from 10 to 9, Monday to Saturday.

There are some valid reasons for this conformity.

You see, operating a liquor store is challenging in Texas. Many counties are dry, banning packaged alcohol outright. Even in wet counties, some cities will ban liquor sales, but allow stores to sell beer and wine.

After navigating this labyrinth just to open their doors, liquor store proprietors generally yearn to keep them open as much as possible. And if they don’t, they’re wary of competitors. Competitors who could take a bite from their customer share if they opened late or closed early.

In essence, Texas’ liquor sales laws have put proprietors in a bind. They don’t directly mandate a 10 AM to 9 PM schedule, six days a week. But they make it nearly impossible to operate any other way.

This principle can be found in countless other corners of our society.

Sales tax rates tend to stay in a basic range from town to town and state to state. Banks generally refuse to guarantee anything above the $250,000 limit covered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission. And of course, companies tend to stay within the guidelines of the Per Diem.

By setting an artificial floor in our capitalistic system, the U.S. government has also lowered the ceiling. Any chance at variety is crushed, leaving us all with immobile, undesirable options.

It’s a phenomenon I call The Safety Net Vice.

The Safety Net Vice might seem like a force of nature. But we’re not powerless against it.

How can this be? Well, let’s consider the factors.

On one side, there is legislative action of some kind. Tax codes, deposit guarantees, and Per Diem guidelines are all influenced by government entities.

We have few means to influence this factor. While we do vote our representatives into office, we have little impact on what they will do once they’re in place.

Indeed, it’s the other side of the equation that is key. The demands of the free market impact our behavior, all too often giving that legislation its vice grip.

This is the area where we can drive change. By tweaking the ways we spend our money, we can flip economic patterns on their heads. The status quo will no longer be tenable, and institutions will have an impetus to offer guarantees above safety net levels.

The road to this outcome is sure to be long and arduous. But the longer we delay the journey, the more treacherous it gets.

So, let’s break free of the Safety Net Vice. Let’s stop starving ourselves in the desert. And let’s seek out a path that works better for everyone.

The time is now.