The Single Most Important Understanding For Your Life Today
Food and Disconnection
It would make sense that in a world and a time where disconnection is an unfortunate circumstance of our “purpose driven lives”, that the disconnection with food would follow suit. Food does not seem to be of paramount importance in our lives. It can often be only an aferthought, in fact, depending upon the amount of organization, planning and preparation you partake in. Notice I did not say it depends on the amount of “thought” you put into it, because we do give food a lot of thought, misconceptual thought, that its. And it’s these conceptions we want to pay LESS attention to.
Disconnection to our food has occurred because of the separation from the life taking. There is very little we have to do to get our food to our tables. Hunting is a novelty rather than a necessity. Gardens are a hobby rather than a fact of life. Opening the can, the box or the bag is the farthest we have to go, and little attention is paid to how that food got into that packaging parcel. We are separated from the very process that our foods must go through before they get to that packaging. The fact that it simply is at the ready sitting on store shelves whenever we need it highlights two parts of the problem. The first is that it speaks to our need for instant gratification. Little is thought about how the food gets to the shelves, but the fact that it is there at the ready when we want it is what is important. It is easy, it is convenient and it speaks to the fact that we don’t WANT food to take up our time. We want or need to put our time and attention on other things; productive and money making things. And quite simply, eating well doesn’t provide us with production and money, in fact it takes our money. Why would we want to give it honor and attention?
The second is that the only “planning” we have to do for our food is deciding and writing down which packages to buy that week. Certainly people purchase the produce that is available in the markets, but if you look at statistics, big box stores are superceding the grocery chains in sales more and more, which means more cheap, discount priced boxed and bagged foods are what is being consumed. The problem is not the fact that we shop there, but that we might want to consider how much real, whole and natural food we are consuming in comparison.
When we do “plan” the meals we prepare, the time to consume them is diminished greatly. The time to enjoy the creation and feel grateful for it, for spending time talking with our families. Often food consumption is mindless, as we watch tv, read the paper or do work tasks. All of these decisions forced upon us by the business of life we have succumbed to creates the disconnection that has helped to lose the realization that food is the greatest thing we can do on a daily basis to get us having a healthy and happy enjoyable life. Not just in preserving, fueling, and healing our bodies, but in the mental functioning that slowing down for food provides our well being. Taking the time puts value on our very lives and has us making decisions that go against convention, saying that we don’t want to live that way any longer. But therein is the risk. And there in come the fears.
It is interesting at a time where consideration for the self has never been greater, that the greatest thing we could do for ourselves doesn’t happen, we are more invested in the self serving ambitions that “get us somewhere”, rather than the daily vote that keeps us grounded, healthy, happy and connected. When we are literally and daily disconnected from the very thing that keeps us creating cells healthfully, taking real time for ourselves, no wonder we would feel disconnected from life itself.
In health and happiness,
DrFoodie