Remember Oprah’s 1986 quotation? “All the fame and the success doesn’t mean anything if you can’t fit into the clothes. If you can’t fit into your clothes, it means the fat won. It means you didn’t win.”
Of course, a billionaire can hire the best dress designers to make beautiful and flattering clothes of any size, and the best hair designer to create a wide hairstyle that fools the eye into making the figure appear slimmer. But you still didn’t win. The fat still won.
This is one of the tragic realities of financial success. You will still be you, even if you can afford some workarounds. “Being you” can mean a lot of different things, but perhaps one of the things it does not mean is a lack of willpower. The idea is worth exploring.
At that point, Oprah Winfrey had not yet begun to work with trainer Bob Greene. Skip ahead 10 years to 1996, when he published a book called Make the Connection: Ten Steps to a Better Body and a Better Life, in which he wrote,
The tough part is finding the discipline, inner strength and willpower to carry out the ten steps.
But wait! If this Greene fellow was correct about the necessity for willpower, and if Oprah truly had none, then how on earth did he become famous as the guru who finally helped set her feet on the right path? Here is another puzzling question. Isn’t this exactly what we here at Childhood Obesity News are trying to get away from: the idea that, in order to lose weight, a person must have a huge supply of willpower — which some people simply don’t possess?
Say what?
Putting those questions aside for a moment, let’s get back to Oprah, who by the mid-80s had piled up gigantic accomplishments in many areas of both creative and material achievement. The idea that she lacked discipline, inner strength, or willpower is ludicrous. Nobody could do all that without heaps of those qualities. So, what is going on here?
Maybe, just maybe, a semantic problem is involved. People might talk about a concept using the same word, but actually hold radically different ideas about what it means. For instance, a patient with a severe eating disorder like anorexia is — even while institutionalized under strict conditions — capable of taking many actions to elude or sabotage treatment that is intended to help them get well. This definitely requires willpower, and lots of very sick people have a ton of it. So, obviously, willpower cannot be an unalloyed good.
But here is a spark of comic relief, thanks to Senior Specialist in Technical Training, Brian Lallatin, who collected an impressive number of lightbulb jokes for the University of Maryland’s website.
During a certain era, the lightbulb joke was all the rage, with the punchline based on an unflattering stereotype of some group. For instance, “How many stoners does it take to change a light bulb? Three: One to hold up the lightbulb, and two to turn the ladder.” The one that really applies here is,
How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the bulb has got to really WANT to change.
This is a self-evident problem with the whole addiction field. No program can help someone who really does not feel any need for change, and that includes addicts. Nobody is going to change unless and until they want to. But, difficult as this may be to believe, a professional expert might agree to the proposition that someone must sincerely want to change — and yet still insist that there must be a cure in which “willpower” is not a necessary component. However, those two beliefs cannot both be true, making this a case of cognitive dissonance that needs to be resolved somehow.
Will means want; willpower means wantpower.
But what is “will,” except another way of saying “want”? And just like wantpower, willpower can be applied to any project. It can be exercised on others, or on the self. Like fire, it can save a life or take a life. It can be applied consciously or unconsciously. Everyone is applying and exercising their will, all the time. Even the most profound apathy is basically caused by a want: The will to do nothing.
Allowing Nature or Fate to take its course is seen from some perspectives as the worst possible choice, and seen by other philosophies as the height of enlightenment. To abandon oneself, and refuse to exert want or will, is an attitude that can destroy the self or others. It can also be seen as the epitome of realization.
A person bent on self-destruction obviously wants to destroy the self, even if by doing nothing. This is all very confusing. What, for instance, is a hunger strike? It is the refusal to eat, and an intention to do nothing instead. Literally, suicide. But surely, for a political prisoner to discipline herself or himself to refuse food, in order to protest conditions or support a cause that one believes in with all one’s heart… Doesn’t that require a considerable exertion of will?
(To be continued…)
Your responses and feedback are welcome!
Source: “Lightbulb Jokes,” cs.umd.edu, undated
Image by Jay Gooby/Attribution 2.0 Generic
FAQs and Media Requests: 
