I ruined it

My son sat at the top of the stairs with a small pool of crocodile tears collecting at this knees. I was sure something catastrophic had occurred as he sobbed over and over,

“I ruined it! It’s all my fault! I wreaked it again!”

It took me a minute to realize that we were talking about a Halloween slap bracelet. I was relieved that any tragedy had, indeed, been averted. My son, however, was deep in his guilt over breaking the second bracelet like this in the last two days. 

“Ok, buddy, it’s actually not your fault that the bracelet broke. These are not high quality items and the people who make them even know they won’t last very long. These aren’t intended to last forever.” 

He was not amused with my explanation and just dug in his heels repeating that it was ALL HIS FAULT. 

As we were talking, I couldn’t help but relate this situation to any diet. Like the slap bracelet, diets aren’t made well, only meant to “work” for the short term and are notoriously good at blaming the user when they stop “working”. It wasn’t my son’s fault that he was working with a crappy product and it’s not your fault when you “fail” at any diet you try. They’re actually made to break so you have to keep using them OVER and OVER. When the bracelet breaks, we know to blame the company, but when the diet stops working we blame ourselves. 

Make mo mistake, you haven’t ruined anything if your latest cleanse, fast, juice, lifestyle plan didn’t work. You’re human and have a body that is far more intelligent than the maker of any toy, computer or diet plan and knows when and how much you need to eat. 

Eventually, my son calmed down and the bracelet made it to the trash without more tears.

He finally accepted that he didn’t ruin it. And neither did you.