“Moderation in everything.” Advice often given to me by my father, usually after I fell short of achieving that new height of “awesome” that I desired. Advice I never really understood as a child. Upon entering college, however, I really started to see all the ways in which moderation can be applied.

If a person does too much of anything, the results can often be disastrous. For instance, almost everyone knows the effects on the body of consistent, habitual binge drinking, but how knowledgeable is everyone on the effects of too much cholesterol? School spirit is fine, but if taken too far, to the point where a person refuses to acknowledge the institution’s flaws, is not much better than hating everything the school does.

If a person tries to maintain a standard of moderation, I would argue that the results would be consistently positive. Not extremely positive mind you, but at least generally so.

On the other hand, if a person is moderate about everything, then that itself is a form of extremism…something definitely anti-moderate. I am not trying to tell everyone that I think they should not feel passion, whether extreme anger or overwhelming joy, but that they should try to avoid experiencing such emotions constantly. Someone who is always extremely angry, while maybe fun to throw produce at, is not a whole lot of fun to be around otherwise. The same can be said of someone who is always really happy. Don’t you just hate those people? Almost everyone has bad days, and if you are always happy, it’s as if you refuse to acknowledge the misfortune of others. A sound flogging might help a constantly happy person become a little sadder, agreed

I guess with all my ramblings and threats of Middle Aged punishments, I’m trying to say that people should really just be a lot more “chill” to borrow from the vernacular of today. If folks would just relax a bit and not take everything to extremes, who knows what sort of society we would have.

It might be made of delicious pizza and hot wings or it might simply be one of more tolerance and enlightenment.

Therefore, my challenge for you this week is to try to be more moderate in your day-to-day lives and see what, if anything, changes. I can almost promise it will. I know it has worked splendiferously for me.