Energy in a can

I wonder how many of you are reading this with an energy drink in your hands. How many of you have drank one today or will drink one before the end of the night. The question then becomes how did America ever survive the century without a Rockstar or a Red Bull in their hands? How did we fight in two world wars without the aid of allies such as Monster and Amp?

If you haven't picked up on the satirical essence of my writing then allow me to make myself clear. This nation has prospered and survived through many decades without the need of ginseng, maltodextrin, inositol, carnitine, creatine, glucuronolactone, or ginko biloba. Yet, here is everyone making these things part of their daily diet. What has changed?

Time has not made a need for energy drinks. Days have not gotten longer, hours have not made themselves heavier, and in no way has a widespread epidemic prevented people from functioning normally. What is the cause?

Why is the nation suddenly so tired, or in other words why do we feel we need more energy?

"Are you tired right now? Well, then of course you need an energy drink. Wait, what's that? You say you went to work from six in the morning to four in the afternoon and then went to school from five in the afternoon to nine? You are tired? Something must be wrong, drink a Red Bull right away. I hear they do something with your mind and then make you fly. What's that? Tomorrow you’re planning on getting up at five in the morning but when you get home at eight in the afternoon you want to stay up all night and play Halo 3? Of course, the answer is Rockstar."

Come on people. We only drink energy drinks because they are readily available for us to do so with them. They have become the alternatives for coffee and maliciously so. We too often forget that we are not machines, our bodies has ways of letting us know it needs something. Feeling a growl in your stomach is a signpost that your body needs nutrition, a small pinch at the bottom of your bladder tells you to get rid of waste by urinating, and feeling weary and slow is no different from that. Our body has to make us tired to let us know it needs sleep, not energy from an outside source. Yet at the first sign of tiredness, we do exactly the opposite of what is good for us.

There are some, jacked up on energy, whom will argue that times have changed and with it have the needs of the people. That life is different than it used to be and therefore we need substances to help us get through these different times. To them, I calmly exalt, "Erroneous". Whilst it be true that times have changed, they have only gotten easier for us. Everything from the toaster oven, to the remote control, to the iPod, has made our life easier. Things have changed for the better and in accordance with facilitation.

To say that this is the reason behind America's obese problem is an understatement, but luckily for you I will not be sweating that issue quite yet.

Life has gotten easier (technically speaking) and therefore the need for more energy and less sleep cannot be accredited to "the times have changed".

I imagine it's just in our nature. The irony is that we constantly invent and adapt things to go against just that, our nature. We don't want to age, we want to eat everything and anything while still maintaining our figure, we want to calculate evolution, we want to be awake for days on end and feel no side effects, and on top of it all we want all of these things sooner than is theoretically possible.

Why must we continuously fight the things we know we can accept? Or better yet, the things that take less effort to fix our selves. If I eat less, I will not get fat. If I sleep more, I will not be as tired. If I take care of myself, I will age naturally.

The road, which is harder, the road "less traveled by" as my friend Robert Frost would say is the one that truly matters. All our actions have consequences, we might be beating nature, but in turn we are naturally beating ourselves.