"Food doesn't have to drive your life."

That is the message written on a billboard I pass most days, advertising a local center for the treatment of eating disorders. 

I'm all for the treatment of eating disorders, medical and otherwise.  I can't help but be struck by the message on the billboard, though.

Because it's demonstrably and indisputably false.

I get what they're trying to say, of course.  But --- really --- food does have to drive your life.  If you stop consuming food, you know, you DIE. 

It's an interesting juxtaposition of the metaphorical and the real meaning of "drive your life."  Of "have to."  Isn't it funny how the metaphorical meaning can be considered so awful that one needs a treatment center to divest people of it?  How at the same time a return to the literal meaning of a statement can be just exactly what is needed?  (Because in a way, having an eating disorder might be defined as having a poor sense of the reality that food is for fueling your body -- for driving your life.  Treating an eating disorder in part means training people to really understand that food is indeed primarily for "driving your life.")

Interesting -- maybe a comment on our oddly dualistic idea of life, of body, of purpose.