This may come as a surprise, but every so often, I don’t write something in fear that it may offend readers.
I know. Based upon some of the things that I’ve written in the past, can you imagine how awful these things must be in order for me to avoid saying them?
Here’s an example:
Last week I wanted to write a piece about juicing. Specifically, I noticed that so many of the juicers who I know are juicing or have juiced are lost souls who lack sufficient self esteem, self confidence or direction in life. They tend to be people who latch onto every latest fad, dietary or otherwise, in a desperate attempt to find the missing piece of a puzzle that’s missing more pieces than they know or are willing to admit.
Juicers often talk about the mental awaking and spiritual enlightenment that comes with juicing. Juicing programs have names like Renovation, Excavation, Glow, Clean, and LOVE Deep. While the idea that juicing can do any of these things is nonsense, it explains why everyone who juices secretly despises their lives:
Happy, confident people don’t need to glow. They don’t require any spiritual awakening. They are not seeking renovation, excavation or love at the bottom of a bottle.
No one juices because they like juice. They juice to become better people.
This, of course, is absurd.
While the idea that all juicers feel like this admittedly an exaggeration, it’s a slight one at best.
But I opted not to write this piece, in fear that I might offend juicers everywhere. Perhaps there are some truly self-actualized juicers who don’t think the world is treating them unfairly. There may be juicers in the world who don’t feel undervalued, ignored, underutilized and under confident.
Perhaps there are some happy juicers out there after all.
But I chose not to write the piece, feeling like doing so would only annoy a large segment of people.
Less than a week later, Katy Waldman of Slate wrote the damn thing for me. Her piece, entitled Stop Juicing: It’s not healthy, it’s not virtuous and it makes you seem like a jerk, attacks juicing on a number of levels, and while she doesn’t spend as much time on the psyche of the juicer as I might have, she feels essentially the same about juicing that I do:
It’s stupid. And if you’re doing it, shut up about it. No one cares.
I just wish that I had said it first.
