"How can you live your life like that?" Angela said. "You are so out of control! One time I see you and you have ballooned to what can only be described as morbid obesity, the next you are running marathons. You just swing from one extreme to another. There seems to be no balance."
"Well," said Kate, "A scales can have a 1 kg weight on either side or a 100 kg weight on either side. It is still balanced either way. A pendulum can have a wide swing or a narrow swing. Either way it keeps passing the centre."
"But doesn't it drive you mad, always careering headlong in this direction and then the other? There is no stability in your life," Angela asked.
"Not really. One can either go on the baby roller coaster or the big roller coaster. Ultimately it makes no difference either way," Kate answered her. "In both cases one's turn on the ride just runs out and one gets off."
"Would it not be better to have more control? More stability?"
"What does control mean? Where is there any? You may think that you are 'in control' because your weight and fitness stay fairly stable, but turn it on its head and you are not in control, because you do not have the ability to experience these extremes if you feel like it. Your set of shoulds and musts is controlling you and keeping you on the baby roller coaster."
"But I don't want to go on the big roller coaster."
"OK, then it is very unlikely that you will go on it, but then it is the wants that are in control and it is not 'you'. Same goes for any other want collection, which might just happen to be different. Many contain a 'go on the big roller coaster' want, and it just so happens that the want collection that is running this body does that at the moment."
"Don't you want to change that?"
"The question doesn't make sense. Does the want collection contain a want to change that? No, at the moment the want collection does not. Maybe some time in the future it will. Who knows? In the meantime, the collection is just doing whatever it wants, as always."
"How can you live with that? It is so out of control!"
"There is no choice. As we have just seen, with you the want collection is doing the exact same thing, whatever it wants, it just so happens that the want collection is a different want collection."
"That is just not so! I have freely chosen to want these things!"
"Really? If that were the case, then you would be free to choose something else without feeling bad about it. But can you? Could you really join us for a go on the big roller coaster without becoming nauseous?"
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