Encapsulated in its most diverse definition the word abbreviation (whether elision, acronym, abridgement, pruning or telescoping) speaks to reduction. Not uncommonly this characterization flourishes upon approaching old age, a frequent example of which is downsizing. But old age – so I have unwittingly discovered – has further ground for cutback. I speak of food.
First I am bound to acknowledge that my latest experiment with gluttony is precluded by having lately undertaken a weekly 2mg dose of Ozempic (the popular dietary remedy). Remarkably Ozempic has improved my life more than cosmetically. Besides I hasten to report that the more potent effect of the drug is not a contamination of appetite nor is it a contest with eating. Ozempic in my experience (about 2 years now, beginning with 0.5mg dose then graduating to 1mg, then 1.5mg and finally to 2mg) is a psychological clarity conjoined with a clarification of food. I cannot avoid using the word clarity to define the abbreviation. Everything is reduced to the simplistic level, often rendered in its uncooked state and certainly in a state void of potentially incongruous additives. In my intellectual (that is, abstract) assessment of the nutritional detail, food is now routinely streamlined to what I might call its basics – things like raw vegetables, white kidney beans, plain poached salmon and shrimp, leafy lettuce or spinach, avocado oil and red wine vinegar. The only luxury might be Maldon salt.
Not only does my instinct (that trustworthy internal mechanism rudely aligned to one’s gut) sanction this gastronomic reduction; more importantly – and in a manner I am regrettably unable fully to define – there is a noticeable psychological balance of food and well being. Among other refinement, no longer is food a reward – what formerly was a toxic celebration of existing need or achievement. The quality of food has changed from exuberance to get to the bottom or to finish the plate; now the unhurried inclination is modest satisfaction and ready acceptance of changeable levels of fulfillment (that is, no longer bound to routine quantity or false necessity). In a word, Ozempic has made food at once both as material yet as understated as the air we breathe. There is a veritable logic to the physical state. Sans competition.
The cerebral effect is difficult to explain because the drug creates an unaccustomed purity with both food and its consumption. Certainly much of the alteration is physical – and unquestionably that is a vital ingredient of the euphoria precipitated by the seeming austerity. Yet the unpretentiousness borders on classic; the moderation suffers no severity or deprivation. The Stoic element is an unintended fortuity – as though it were the consequence of unadulterated reasoning.
The topic of abbreviation has other current application. As my late father was wont regularly to observe, “Say little but think much!” Plutarch in his Moralia wrote this,
“Philosophy finds talkativeness a disease very difficult and hard to cure. For its remedy, conversation, requires hearers: but talkative people hear nobody, for they are ever prating. And the first evil this inability to keep silence produces is an inability to listen. It is a self-chosen deafness of people who, I take it, blame nature for giving us one tongue and two ears. ”
Excerpt From
Plutarch’s Morals
Plutarch
Abbreviation serves yet another useful purpose in my opinion. Abbreviation of logic is for me the most diverting. Being a deductive person, I normally begin the inner formulation of a logical assessment with the clinical model; that is, If A = B and B = C, then A = C.
The statement “If A = B and B = C, then A = C” is true and defines the transitive property of equality. In mathematics and logic, this means that if two quantities are both equal to a third quantity, they are equal to each other.
Example: Common
All humans are mortal.
Socrates is a human.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
Example: Algebraic Variables
𝑥=𝑦+3
𝑦+3=10
Conclusion:
𝑥=10
It is in the context of these elemental fragments that I advance my favour for Ozempic. It is the only drug I’ve ever taken that successfully surpasses the physic to the psychic.