Onions by Lucy Beale
I spend lots of time around food. Heck, we all do. Even if you think you don’t, you do. I know you eat. Otherwise you simply couldn’t be reading this. You would be in a different astral dimension, one in which you may not need to eat, but also wouldn’t have a body.
Once upon a time, one of my husbands, Bob, decided that he was going to learn how to transcend his need to have a body by giving up the need to eat. I thought this was really a dumb idea, and ultimately convinced him that this wouldn’t give good example to our baby son. After a week or so of my total adamant disapproval of his plan, he changed his thinking and instead decided to give up the need to sleep. I am absolutely not kidding. He found a couple other guys who also wanted to transcend the need to sleep (no kidding here, either) and they starting holding some kind of business meetings in our home at 2 am while the baby and I were sleeping. The guys were generous enough not to “OHM” so loudly that they disturbed our well-earned slumber.
This “spiritual” endeavor went on for about 2 weeks. He looked like a zombie, he talked like a zombie. By the way, just so you can picture this event in your mind, he was a businessman and as was the fashion in those days, he wore a 3-piece suit every day to the office. (suit coat and pants with vest, white shirt, and tie) Now you get the full zombie picture.
Then, one evening he came home from work looking like a zombie with spots on his shirt and tie and said that perhaps I’d been right all along. Giving up sleep hadn’t exactly worked out as he planned. That day at lunch with a client at a nice restaurant, he nodded off and did a face plant directly into his plate of food. Notice it was food on his face that finally woke him up enough to face an important fact of life. In our incarnate phase of reality, people have bodies. One responsibility we humans all have is to take care of our bodies which includes eating. It can be harmful, let alone stupid to think and act otherwise.
Since you have a body, you need to eat. But eating brings with it some BIG problems. If you eat mindlessly, soon your waistband will be screaming at you to set it free. Or it may look better by being draped rather than dressed. You might want to go on a diet, which never works well for long. So I’ve been thinking of pithy questions with which to accost myself when a feeding opportunity beacons.
Lately I’ve been asking as I gaze into the pantry, “Am I hungry or am I bored?” Duh, obviously I’m bored or I’d be doing something more compelling that gazing into the pantry.
At meals when I want to eat more food but have already satisfied my appetite I ask, “Do I want to eat this because Patrick is still eating, or does my body require more food?” Again the answer is obvious. I’m eating because Pat is eating. He’ll claim he only eats desserts because I do. How easy it is to not be mindful, and instead bury our personal body truth in someone else’s behavior.
I didn’t try to give up sleep along with Bob. If you are ever tempted to give up sleeping, ask yourself this pithy question, “Do I really want to transcend my body, or would I rather eat sitting in nice restaurants and avoid face plants?” Duh!
P.S. I asked Bob to review this before I posted. He thought it was fine and enjoyed reliving the moments.
