You go, Chris!

Chris Voigt is my kind of guy!! Join me in giving him a round of applause!!

Chris is in the midst of eating nothing but potatoes for two months. (How can a blog with the words mashed potatoes in the title NOT salute a guy like that?)

I applaud him for the potato action, as well as the broader philosophical question this raises.

Chris is executive director of the Washington State Potato Commission, and is doing this to help fight the bad image (among those who don't love potatoes as much as I do) of potatoes having too many carbs, being bad for weight gain, etc.

But it turns out that, as long as Chris was healthy enough to handle all the extra potassium his spud-tacular diet would provide, potatoes provide a lot of nutrients.

Now, Chris is eating his potatoes with no sides or toppings. Personally, there have been times when I have had a late night snack of mashed potatoes (leftover fresh or instant), but I don't think I could go two months on just any one food.

But that made me look at this from a different perspective. Do we really need all the different foods that we want to eat? Do we really need all of the different things in life we want?

Chris is surviving on just potatoes, and chances are he will come out of this just fine. His effort to educate people about the value of potatoes should also teach us that we want too much generally from life. Factor in the amazing recent experience of the Chilean miners, who had so, so little to survive on, especially at first, yet they emerged as heroes. They did have an amazing faith in God. (I'm sure that if focusing on one thing in life is best way to go, that focusing on God is the one best thing on which to focus.)

Personally challenging economic times (before the major collapse of the past three or four years) literally forced me to give up on many materialistic lustings I had. My overall attitude about possessions became, "They're just things." As I recover from my own financial crises, I find myself wanting some nicer things again from time to time. But I certainly don't obsess about things like I used to, and that's quite fine with me.

Perhaps these two episodes can remind us that we too often want too much. Who knew potatoes could be so philosophical?