Sheryl Nome
Fair Warning: This is one of the rare Serious Posts
The one thing that I’ve been noticing a lot of lately is people who run around saying that they can’t do this, or that….they’ve tried hard to quit smoking, quit drinking, quit overeating, but they just aren’t able to do it. The interesting thing is these people always act like it’s the cigarettes, the bottle, the hamburger that are at fault; they always seem to leave themselves out of the equation. It would be easier and more honest to simply say “I tried to defeat myself and I failed.” I think at the point where you go into battle with yourself and you lose is the point where you should just give up trying to achieve anything in life. I guess these are the same people that want someone else to be responsible for everything in their lives as they are obviously incapable of handling them. The reason why these things bother me is that I have first-hand experience with some of them and the reason why I stopped doing this and that was because I wanted to. I didn’t want anything having any control over me, so I just stopped, and that’s all that anyone else has to do. Sure your body may be a jerk to you and crave this or that, but that’s what the saying mind over matter is for. You don’t actually need to eat that burger, you’re not actually starving, you won’t die without the next puff of that cigarette. You know this perfectly well and all you have to do is not do it.
So why did I put Sheryl Nome at the top of the post? Well, she actually embodies this mindset pretty well. Anytime she faces an obstacle she assures herself that she can overcome it because “she’s Sheryl Nome.” Sure, she got a bit disheartened when she found out that she was dying, but that’s perfectly reasonable and she overcame that as she sang in the shelter, saying “if Ranka can be the Princess of Hope then I can sing even in the depths of despair.” I think this is one of the reasons that I like Sheryl a lot better than Ranka, because she is facing a lot of adversity while going from being the Galactic Nymph to a dying woman crying in the rain in the middle of the street. Yet, she didn’t give up, because she’s Sheryl.
And how does this relate to someone quitting smoking, or trying to quit drinking? Sure you can struggle and sure you can face hardships, but the only obstacle you really have to face is yourself. Then you can look back and realize that you defeated the you that was a weakling and crybaby.