My favorite frozen pizza is the Lotzza Motzza Brew Pub Pizza. Making that distinction is as significant to me as I assume 'this is my favorite person' is to most people. In my meandering existence, those 15 minutes I might spend eating something disastrous for my health is often the highlight of my day. Normally, these delicious gifts from Wisconsin run about $10.49 at my local grocery store. At the moment, they're on sale for $7.49, a pretty significant savings, and a far more reasonable price for a brief reprieve from the burden of sentience. Absent any external variables, I'd buy all of the pizzas they could make before the sales end, and I'd live the remainder of my life with one fewer concern knowing I'd never be more than 20 minutes (including preheat time) from salvation. Unfortunately, reality stubbornly creeps into even the simplest of enjoyments, placing it's limitations over our experience. And so the challenge becomes; how can we maximize the experience in the face of these obstacles? How indeed.
The first variable is, at it's core, perhaps the simplest. In all honesty, though, it's the most complicated. How long should I expect to live? Converted to fit this purpose; how many pizzas can I expect to eat before I die? To start, I'll estimate I eat 2 pizzas per week. Simple enough. Now to the difficult measurements. The life expectancy for the average white American male is 76.71. I don't smoke. I've never been much of a drinker aside from a few nights in my early 20s. I get regular exercise. All things considered, I've been pretty easy on my body aside from my miserable diet. I also have a family history of several relatives breezing by that 76-year mark. Considering that average life expectancy already factors in those lost early to some unexpected tragedy, at least on paper, that average is probably a reasonable expectation. However, if I'm being completely honest with this, there's one more factor. I don't necessarily intend on seeing this thing through to the end. I don't have kids and I don't have any significant other. I have very little responsibility to anyone beyond my parents and siblings. I'm not religious, so I don't fear the consequences of some eternally torturous after-life. If I'm not enjoying this life, and my body and mind are diminished, there will come a point where it's going to be clear; not only is life not going to improve, but the quality of life is going to continue to decrease from here. Continuing at that point, just because of what's been invested, is what's know as sunk cost fallacy. In a vacuum, free of emotional considerations, the rational act would be to withdraw from existence. The problem with this consideration has nothing to do with me. In just thinking about one day not existing there washes over me a relief. The worry is the effect on any loved ones I'd leave behind. For that reason, determining my own end remains mostly a fantasy. As for now, I'm left to wait on nature to run it's eventual course. I'm going to make my final estimate 70.25, knocking off just over 5 years for my grueling pessimism. That gives me an even 40 years of remaining life. Yay.
So, our pizza equation now looks like this:
Pizzas per week = A1, Number of remaining weeks alive = B1
=A1*B1, or
=2*2,080
Next up. how many pizzas can I actually afford? The nice thing about having limited responsibilities, and not valuing my future all that much, is that nearly 100% of my income is disposable income. I recently had a conversation with a close friend about the hypothetical possibility of following my family if they were to move away, and I told him, "if most of life is going to be terrible, it's of little consequence to me where it's going to be terrible." It was a joke, but there's a good deal of honesty in that statement, too. The where does little to ease my overriding concerns. I consider money, at least as it pertains to my realistic access to it, in much the same way. If I'm incredibly frugal and responsible with my money, then I'd be only slightly less fucked than I already am. So far, there's still been enough concern about money and my future that I've been reluctant to just drop everything I hate and make some positive use of the little bit of money I have saved while my body and mind are still well enough off to do so. Part of me thinks, I could do everything right and invest my money responsibly and all it would really accomplish is affording me whatever pride I find in being self-sufficient in my misery, grinding away to till the very end. What's the value of that life? Another part thinks; even if my life savings can only afford me 6 months to a year of some kind of true enjoyment of life before being faced with the harsh consequences, would that time not be more valuable than an entire lifetime spent in a mostly silent execration of being? Again, there's been a lot of ME's and I's in this paragraph. Perhaps I'm looking at all of this too selfishly. As depressing as it is to consider, most of my motivation and even continued existence is heavily influenced by trying to not be an incessant financial or emotional burden on loved ones. So, in staying consistent with that theme, I'd have to limit myself to $3,000 spent on pizza.
Our equation just got a bit more complicated. We now add the price, with a MIN() formula setting the maximum value at $3,000. Dividing whatever value is produced again by the price of an individual pizza to get the number of desired units. It now looks like this:
Price of Pizza = C1
=MIN(3000,A1*B1*C1)/C1, or
=MIN(3000,2*2,080*7.49)/7.49
Our total number of pizzas comes to 400.53. That's how many pizzas I should buy to take advantage of this sale to the fullest extent of my financial and biological limitations. There's still one problem, however. My freezer only has room for maybe 10. That's it. Five weeks. 10 days. A grand total of 150 minutes of deliverance is all I'll be able to gain from this tremendous value. Fuck.
It goes to show, there's no limitations on the number of restrictions that can be placed on our experience of life. Perhaps the lesson is to find enjoyment in the moment, in that day's pizza. There's no value in worrying about all the uncertainty of the future. Maybe the lesson is that there's no point at all. All of the effort we put in to chase riches that our freezers can't hold. All the while, the beautiful freedom of insignificance escapes our perception. If I've learned anything from this exercise.... I don't think I'm going to die with pizza in my freezer.
