{"id":394768,"date":"2026-03-20T09:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T09:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/394768\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T09:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T09:57:08","slug":"i-wont-make-my-life-harder-ill-take-the-lift-eat-biscuits-choose-easy-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/394768\/","title":{"rendered":"I won\u2019t make my life harder. I\u2019ll take the lift, eat biscuits, choose easy \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s the season. The neighbours are getting competitive with their decorative Dunnes<\/a> wreaths outside their doors. We are complaining about the price of Mini Eggs. Easter<\/a> is nearly upon us and it brings important revelations about mankind.<\/p>\n

There are two types of people \u2013 those who refuse to eat any of their gifted Easter eggs until Easter Sunday to prove their triumph of will over the sin of gluttony. And normal people who know how to have a good time. <\/p>\n

A wise philosopher (Patrick Freyne<\/a>) at a party once told me the world is divided into biscuit eaters and biscuit hiders. Then they marry each other. Biscuit eaters hate food waste. They never let biscuits go stale. They are the epicureans, the existentialists.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow is not promised, we must choose happiness now. Or they just really like biscuits. If a packet of biscuits was opened and demolished in 24 hours, did it even exist if no one else got to eat any? <\/p>\n

Then there are the biscuit hiders. People who can just \u201chave one, maybe two\u201d before folding the packaging over neatly and putting them back into the cupboard. <\/p>\n

They will ask silly questions like: \u201cWhere have the delicious chocolate coated biscuits that I bought a week ago gone? You can\u2019t have eaten ALL of them in that time?\u201d As if a full-grown adult eating a mere 400g of digestives over seven full working days is both a disgusting and surprising outcome. <\/p>\n

For them, biscuits aren\u2019t bought for eating, you eejit. They are a daily test of self-denial sitting in the press. They are to prove you can resist temptation to enjoy the fruits of delayed gratification, until someone eats them all on you because they were sitting there for ages making you get really mad. <\/p>\n

\n

Having to line up to use a microwave that\u2019s just heated tuna to eat congealed leftovers from sauce-stained Tupperware is an indignity<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I know it\u2019s hard to tell from my unbiased journalism, but I am a biscuit eater. If I can help it, I try not to deny myself any pleasure, ever. I am whatever the direct opposite of a Calvinist is. I will get my groceries delivered. I will not waste my precious leisure time making manky brown bananas into banana bread. Why would I? So I can still feel bad throwing out something I haven\u2019t eaten for the second time, now with added ingredients? <\/p>\n

In fairness, it is not entirely my fault I am this way. My mother was never big on abstention for the sake of it. When the teacher asked us what we were giving up for Lent, I asked her what to say. \u201cCigarettes,\u201d she answered, not skipping a beat. I was six, so in her defence, it was a fantastic joke. They never asked again. She didn\u2019t think kids should have to stop doing anything they enjoy. Not when adulthood is one long stream of trying to eat less sugar and going to bed earlier. <\/p>\n

We are entering a self-denial boom. Extreme thinness is back. Calorie deficient coaches exist online. People are injecting themselves with bootleg peptides and GLP-1s bought from the internet. Ingredients unknown. The desire for betterment? All consuming. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Brianna Parkins: The invisible working-class line where things are \u2018not for people like us\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Yet when people who have struggled with their weight their entire lives turn to GLP-1s they are criticised for taking the \u201ceasy way out\u201d. Which means the stigma was never about weight, it was the moral judgment about someone\u2019s body being a reflection of their self-discipline. Their ability to abstain. <\/p>\n

Now GLP-1s can help people get over the complex socioeconomic, psychological and biological hurdles that make maintaining a smaller weight harder for some more than others, will people move away from team sports and into public displays of fitness, which can\u2019t be \u201ccheated\u201d with drugs? Hyrox, the sport of \u201cbeing good at gym exercises\u201d is already booming in popularity.<\/p>\n

So I will resist. I will not make my life harder. I will take the lift, not the stairs. I won\u2019t take my lunch to work; it\u2019s grim enough spending eight hours a day under fluorescent lights. <\/p>\n

Having to line up to use a microwave that\u2019s just heated tuna to eat congealed leftovers from sauce-stained Tupperware is an indignity. I won\u2019t book a flight before 10am because it\u2019s cheaper. That saved \u20ac50 will cost me an entire day being in bad form from having to get up at 4am.<\/p>\n

I will eat the biscuits. We are not promised tomorrow. When an amazing woman I knew died too young and suddenly, her family said she had no money in her bank account but she did have tickets to every big gig that year. I think of her often and fondly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s the season. The neighbours are getting competitive with their decorative Dunnes wreaths outside their doors. We are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[49873,79,154384,18,2215,19,17,361],"class_list":{"0":"post-394768","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-brianna-parkins","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-easter","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-for-you","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-magazine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116260912918696150","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}