About a year ago I got diagnosed with Type II diabetes, which shouldn’t have surprised anybody. It was pretty stressful at the time, particularly considering that in this country, rich people can just keep increasing the price of insulin for no fucking reason. My poor girlfriend had to talk me down off a ledge.

It’s a year later, I’ve dropped 15% of my body mass and my blood is registering like somebody who’s merely in danger of having diabetes rather than somebody who straight up has it. With a little more diligence, all symptoms of the condition will vanish. This is the part where I talk about what an inspiring and hard journey the past year has been, how it was a struggle but the early mornings and endless laps and personal transformation were worth it.

Too bad I did basically jack shit. Sorry.

Seriously. I started giving half my fries to my girlfriend or her kids at meals, and I dropped like two suit sizes. A big initial burst of weight loss was straight up depression at the diagnosis. The rest has been almost nothing. No vicious discipline. No workouts. No inspiring story. And most importantly of all, no fucking running because running is bullshit.

I really want to get across something here: Weight loss or better health or wellness or whatever you want to call it is not inherently virtuous, any more than being good at writing or rhetoric is inherently virtuous. It is a tendency. It is a temperament. It is a privilege, guys. Genetics. As it stands, I am predisposed toward probably being at risk for Type II diabetes my whole life, but evidently, unless something changes, not SO MUCH AT RISK that I can’t easily course-correct with the pathetic amount of self control I actually have. I am here to tell you there is zero virtue in that.

Other people have to work hard to save themselves from this disease. For a lot of people, it’s more than they can do in the face of a callous society and insurmountable risk factors that first arose when their mother and father’s DNA first joined together. I take some joy in being one of the lucky ones because I get to write my stuff and love my girlfriend and play more D&D and otherwise spend more time on this side of the curtain, but that is all I am: Lucky.

But you know what would be great? If more people were lucky. If, just by being born in a great country like the United States, those dire risk factors or personal tendencies didn’t condemn people to wasting away into a husk because of how they were born, or the food that their horrible dead-end job leaves them no money and no choice but to eat after a day of intolerable bullshit.

I would love for everybody to have so grand a privilege, and I cannot understand the people who don’t feel the same way.