Day 13: I Ate Beans But It Was All Wrong

I ate Taco Bell today.  I feel terrible about it.

It was a particularly intense day for several reasons.  I had planned to go home for lunch, as I now regularly do, but the lunch hour came and went.  Minute by minute, the hunger pains and distraction that accompanies them continued to grow.  I was able to head home at about 2:15pm - and then the reminder on my Blackberry flashed: conference call at 2:45pm.  What to do?  I knew I had some almonds back at work, but one more nut today was likely to send me over the edge.  I should have toughed it out.  I had already declined a going-away lunch invitation for a favorite, stellar colleague whose leaving our office and headed to do great things at a community college.  Knowing I needed to be in the office for the call, I turned my car around.  And there they were: The line-up of fast food options dotted across any-landscape USA.  I made a flash decision to pull into Taco Bell.  The lesser of four evils.  They serve lots of bean, one of my project staples.  "Two bean burritos, that's all, ah, and salt please."  Guilt was all I felt as I salivated.  I wolfed down the burritos and shelved, for a moment, the guilt.  I just wanted the ache in my belly to go away.  It wasn't about savoring the feast (12 days without "normal" food, Taco Bell seemed feast-like), but filling a basic need.

I had planned poorly, physically felt the consequence of it, and made a lame decision.  Writing about this now, feeling satiated after having had a hearty dinner of potatoes, eggs, and cabbage, it's a bit alarming.  Not what I did - though I feel no pride in it and am fully committed to doing things differently as I crawl, shamefully, back on the wagon - but feeling, for a few moments, the anguish of having access to so little.

How do people cope when a job is lost and there are virtually no prospects on the horizon?  Or when a home is forclosed on?  Do people engage in behavior, sometimes criminal, that under better circumstances would never be considered?  The question has been debated for years.  Some researchers maintain that there is not correlation between a downturn in the economy and a rise in crime.  According to David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Reduction at John Jay College of Criminal Studies, the Great Depression saw no rise in crime while there was a high crime rate during the "Roaring Twenties" when prosperity reined and indulgence was the order of the day.  But other variable must be considered in such a study.  For instance, prohibition and the introduction of organized crime during the 1920's arguably contributed to these outcomes.

According to the Congressional Research Service, "Studies analyzing the relationship between unemployment and crime rates tend to find small statistically significant correlations between unemployment and the property crime rate but not between unemployment and the violent crime rate." Corroborating this is Severin Sorensen, author of Economic Misery and Crime Waves.  He asserts that certain crimes do track dire economic downfalls, including alcohol-related crimes, domestic violence, child and elder abuse."

All the same, it seems natural for misery to beget misery.  These are unimaginably challenging times for so many of us.  The degree of strain varies, but when experienced can be transforming, if only for a short time, for better or for worse. If ever there was a time to reach out and offer what we can to one another, now seems to be that time.

Usually disciplined, purposed, and true to my pledge, today I fell short.  More than ever I am mindful of those who truly are suffering, and more than ever dedicated to staying the course.

The next time beans beckon, they'll be in the form of homemade hummus.