If I had to choose a different path to make my many millions, I think I’d like to try a career in advertising. Sure, it could be a fairly stressful gig, but I would be entertained by the challenge of convincing people to buy stuff that they didn’t know they needed until they saw, watched, or heard my marketing pitch. Think about it. Is there any basic staple or convenience that we don’t already have? I mean, aside from a personal valet or butler. “Alfred, could you fetch me my slippers and smoking jacket?” Take a quick look around your house, apartment, or yurt, if you are one of my many Mongolian readers. I’m willing to bet that the great majority of what you see is “less than necessary” to sustain life. Heck, our pets have more than our ancestors brought over from the old (olde) country. “Hortence, methinks that more than one tunic is ostentatious, and shall take up space that hard tack and salted herring might otherwise occupy.” We take more with us for a weekend in an Airbnb at the beach than our forebears possessed in four score and seven years. I’m not saying that we are spoiled, but we sure are spoiled. A lot of the excesses in our lives cater to our demand for comfort and ease. We are convinced that we deserve it, after all. McDonald’s may have been the first big corporation in my memory to pander to our narcissism with its slogan, “You deserve a break today”. It assumes, logically, that we do deserve a break, and not just today. I’m sure a farmer working a 14 hour day in the fields or the nine year old operating a drill press in a third world sweat shop would wholeheartedly agree that a guy sitting on a couch in an air conditioned living room deserves a break. When a third or fourth ice cream flavor was invented, it was considered some type of sorcery. Now we have 31+ varieties at Baskin Robbins, some of which are barely edible. Point is, it doesn’t take much effort to appeal to our vanity, comfort, or excesses.
Water, in and of itself, has zero intelligence. No matter what you do to it, you will not make it smart. Adding ingredients, processing it in any way, or labeling it will not help it get a higher score on the SAT, memorize the multiplication table, or name a single state capital. Water is as water does, to paraphrase Forrest Gump’s mother. That said, I feel smarter when grabbing a bottle at the Piggly Wiggly, and more importantly, the checker at the cash register is certain to recognize my vast intellect because I choose to drink Smart Water. Records show that Copernicus drank water from a well or cistern or some such source and he was a pretty smart dude. Critics may scoff, “But what if he drank Smart Water? Imagine how much more brilliant he could have been!” Sure, person that ate Tide Pods to participate in a TikTok challenge. We need to get to a place in our lives where we aren’t compelled to impress others, even ourselves. It is ultimately vanity, and striving after the wind (Eccl. 1:14).
On what are you basing your identity or contentedness?
(Click “Stand on Firmer Ground” for a deeper look into Smart Water)