INTROSPECTIVE DEBAUCHERY
It’s that time of year again. So put on your party clothes, grab your pancakes and your Paczkis, your beads and your doubloons and head on outside to dance to the sound of Dixieland. Or if you’d prefer, just kick back, crank up the tunes and have yourself a good old-fashioned homemade bacchanal.

Why all the hubbub? Because it’s Mardi Gras. Fat Tuesday. Shrove Tuesday. International Pancake Day.

The next forty-eight hours are tailor-made for the little schizophrenic that lives in all of us. Today we party like it’s 1999 – eating, drinking, carousing – because it all ends tomorrow. Tomorrow is sackcloth and ashes. Tomorrow we’re sorry. Tomorrow we start trudging down the long and winding road of repenting. Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. Forty days of introspection. Forty days of examining our mistakes.

Pardon me while I call the whole thing a pile of hooey.

Now let me explain. I have nothing against pancakes. Or jelly doughnuts. Or beads or Dixieland bands. And I must admit, a little well placed debauchery is fun, if not entirely necessary on occasion. I also recognize the importance of introspection and shining a laser beam of light into those parts of our personality we’d rather not face. Saying I’m sorry and making improvements in the way we live our lives and treat our neighbors -- these are all very important things.

But like so many things in this world, why is it that we cannot seem to do anything unless it is overdone to the point of grotesqueness? A one-day celebration of Mardi Gras has turned into a week-long eating, drinking, hommage a Janet Jackson flashing binge. Why? Because when the calendar says party, we party hard. And in knowing ahead of time that repentance has already been scheduled in as a part of the deal, it seems to give a tacit permission to be extra unrepentant today.

Yes, tomorrow we’ll be sorry. Extra sorry. Super-sized sorry. We’ll be so sorry that some of us will walk around with smudged foreheads all afternoon. We’ll be so sorry that we’ll give up a host of yummy scrumptious nesses to show how sorry we are. Meat on Friday? Gone. French fries, candy, desserts – you name it, it’s history for the next forty days. Why? Because the calendar says we’re supposed to be sorry, so we’re going to show you just how sorry we can be.

But how did personal introspection get linked to french fries? What does an absence of pie have to do with repentance? How does my choice of fish or beef determine whether or not I am a more sympathetic human being on this earth?

It doesn’t. Or it does. Or it might. See? Schizo.

If receiving ashes, or giving up food or drink or denying oneself various pleasures of life allows a person to get beyond the distractions of daily living in order to meditate on the divine, then I say more power to you. But the bigger question is what happens after the days of personal denial are over? How many people who have given up a host of their favorite tasty morsels perform a giant “phew!” come Easter morning as they dive for the Chocolate Eggs and Peeps? How many are in line at the drive-through the next day ordering their double gut buster burger and wombo-sized fries?

My problem with a scheduled sorry session is just that: it’s scheduled. It’s like forty days of performance art, and some people relish the role of Master Thespian. However, when it’s over – curtain down and strike the set – it’s over. Pack it away next to the Halloween Bucket and rusty Christmas Tree Stand, and it will sit quietly gathering dust until the next penitential season.

I’m all for introspection. I’m all for shining a light into the less-desirable portions of myself and figuring out what I need to do to make myself a better person. Saying “I’m sorry” is important, but those are just words. Being sorry is important, but if it is done only because the calendar tells us so, it loses it’s meaning.

Living is the key. Living a life that is able to be retrospective. Living a life that is open, receptive and willing to change. Living a life guided by love and respect. Living a life of celebration, and not suffocation. Because I'm telling you, that proverbial pile of hooey can be deadly.
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