Chocolate Chip Cookies vs. Toilet Paper

If I was a hoarder, I would choose chocolate chip cookies over toilet paper. In a head-to-head match, chocolate chip cookies have many more benefits for coping with the COVID-19 crisis.

That soothing smell of a freshly baked cookie can’t be matched by toilet paper, even the scented kind. A tray of warm, melt-in-your-mouth treats brings back memories of when the world was a simpler and safer place, and family and friends could share in the delight.

Imagine serving up a tray of warm toilet paper rolls. It just doesn’t have the same good feeling. A well-made chocolate chip cookie is almost a survival staple. It covers several of my favorite food groups, including grains, nuts, and dairy. Toilet paper, although edible, doesn’t fall under any food group. It is not recommended for oral intake.

Consuming chocolate chip cookies has the added benefit of psychological and emotional relief by lifting one’s mood. There is relief in connection with acts preceding toilet paper use, but there is no causal link connecting toilet paper use and a long-lasting positive mood change. One quickly dismisses the experience and moves on with other more pressing issues.

When the Oracle in the movie “Matrix” told the hero, who was extremely stressed, to sit and have a chocolate chip cookie to alleviate some of his anxiety, she was passing on the healing history that is baked into every homemade cookie. Toilet paper has nothing to match up with that.

The chocolate chip cookie is also famous. An ice cream flavor is named after it, a blue monster craves it, and Andie MacDowell thinks John Travolta smells like it. The stardom of the cherished chocolate chip cookie blows toilet paper away. In lieu of other options, I’d hoard some extra chocolate chip cookies rather than extra toilet paper.

In my previous column, I describe the “four-S safety program,” in which the final “S” stands for serenity. One of the steps that can be taken to help generate and pass on feelings of serenity is to maintain a lightness of being. And one of the easiest ways to experience lightness of being is with humor.

Laughter is great medicine for people with Parkinson’s and other chronic diseases, or for those just trying to survive each day of the COVID-19 outbreak.

During these times, when the tender embraces of family and friends are absent, familiar stores and restaurants are closed, the comfort of routine is demolished, and doom and gloom run rampant through news broadcasts and almost all of our conversations, it is essential to find moments of serenity.

Even now, in the middle of this pandemic, finding personal serenity is still possible. Take a moment and use the comments section below to describe how you find serenity in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis. And bake up a batch of those cookies!

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