"OPPORTUNITY Calling...

Will you accept the charges?"
After getting a better nights sleep following my ER adventure, I found myself tiptoeing around my subsequent food choices (remember that 'pain' I talked about...); hungry, yet fearful enough of making the wrong choices.  Interesting how pain, when most effective, is capable of clearing and focusing the mind.  I would venture a guess that age and life experience may partner in this function.
A reasonably intelligent human being, I consider myself a 'wisdom seeker' with the goal of living life to the fullest potential for which I am capable.  But this particular (and potentially more serious) health crisis forced me to re-examine just how truly dedicated I am to "wisdom".
The recommended guidelines for healthy food choices have always been readily available for as long as I can recall.  "Daily Allowances" and colorful food charts are a vague recollection from my school days gone by.  But of course, there is a caveat:  one must first really care about those recommended choices.  Being of the opposite persuasion over the years: sufficiently aware but more interested in taste and the emotionally soothing effects, naturally translated into disinterest in those guidelines should they clash with my personal "need" at the point of selection.
Not that I haven't often marveled over the years at how my, less than stellar, diet hasn't left my body demanding ultimate restitution for my imbalanced choices.  Deep inside I think I've always expected my lack of wisdom, in this particular arena of my life, to finally "catch up" with me.  Those many episodes in which my body, unpleasantly, reminded me of it's limitations were effective... until I was sufficiently recovered and the next temptation came along.
Age...yes.  I'm convinced this added element has now become the eye-opener of which youth gives little thought.  As unbelievable as it sounds I realize now, with many years of life experience behind me, that I, like most youth, thought little of death and it's capability for lack of convention.  But to help death along with poor life-choices is a bit too unconscionable, for even me at this crossroad in my life.
My body called for my attention in such a way that it could not be ignored and now the ball is in my court.  The big question is, "Will  I accept the charges?"

*  Note to Health Researchers:  "Could you please quit changing the  "rules of the game" on us!?"