here you are. in this place, surrounded by these people, shopping at these stores, buying the things offered—living by way of the people that surround you and the things offered to you for survival.
some of the people and places offer the most pleasurable tastes and experiences. some offer what is absolutely necessary for survival, while some offer the “extras”. most offers are somewhere in the middle of pleasurable and necessary and so we choose.
every single day decisions are put in front of us based on what the people and places around us are offering. you can pick based on pleasure, you can pick based on necessity, or you can pick to find your own way.
convenience comes in both the pleasure-full and the necessary. challenge often arises when you do not choose the convenient way. not one is right or more right than any other, they are all just options to pick from.
pleasure pleases you. pleasure leaves a smile on your face and some feel-good chemicals in your brain. it’s delightful, it’s intoxicating, and it leaves you wanting more.
necessity is need fulfilling. to get from here to there and have the experience i am aiming for, it is necessary for me to have this thing. whether or not it’s actually necessary for you to get from here to there is a different thing altogether, but ultimately, this thing is necessary for my survival, for my growth, or for my pleasure (that word “pleasure” again).
the reason i threw pleasure in at the end of necessity is that the way we live our lives is soft. most everything is unnecessary but because we want our lives to include it, it becomes necessary.
food is one of the foundations for survival, a truly necessary piece of life. food for pleasure can bring on ecstasy. food for necessity can bring on illness. but food for pleasure can also bring on illness, while food for necessity can strengthen vital health.
if you want food for pleasure, you can have it. if you want food for necessity, you can have it. if you want food for convenience and pleasure, you can have it. if you want food for it’s essential nutrients, and necessity, you can have it. you can even have essential nutrients, necessity, AND pleasure, you just have to open your mind and your schedule (because you need time to pay more attention).
two major differences between choosing the live, nutrient-rich foods that come from the Earth and the convenient processed foods that come from most store shelves are:
1. the amount of time it takes you to prepare your food
2. the number of hands in the process of getting the food from it’s origin to your mouth
it’s easy to get you to choose something that is fast and convenient but to get you to choose it knowing it ain’t natural and there were countless hands in the process of creating it, they distract you by turnin the pleasure experience way-the-cuss up.
mass food manufacturers study, in-depth, the pleasure response of their food. they make sure they push as many pleasure buttons as possible. mass food manufacturers have so much money, they can afford to figure out how to produce more and more pleasure, no matter the price.
in mass food manufacturing, often times the cost, or the price is the sacrifice of integrity. integrity meaning: remaining human in the process. keeping in mind the impact of food ingredients on health. they know what is harmful because someone did a study to tell them this much of this thing is harmful. but no one did a study on trace amounts, sooooo trace amounts are ok—a bunch of shit that isn’t human friendly is put into all food because if you make it a small enough amount, it will fly…
the shit they put in tap water is poison. same with the shit they spray on plants and feed livestock.
of course, there are exceptions, there are many people/businesses around the globe changing the way they do things to make consciousness more of a priority. very few companies in the grand scheme leave out the harmful shit as well as change processes to limit the amount of waste they put out. these are the companies and products i support, but at the end of the day i’m always looking for fewer hands, fewer ingredients and fewer words i can’t pronounce or define.
it seems to me, because we insist on doing more, having more and fitting more into our days, the convenience of mass food production isn’t changing anytime soon. foods are actually coming so prepared, the end consumer barely has any work to do other than using their hands to open the package.
because convenient products will always exist, it’s up to each of us individually to make our choices: ‘food from the earth’ or ‘food from a box’. if you can’t spare the time to think about what you’re going to be eating later, then you are a slave to convenience. if you include thoughts about preparation necessary for your upcoming meals throughout your day, then ‘food from the Earth’ isn’t so cumbersome to prepare.
conscious awareness of ourselves provides the time needed to make conscious choices about food. convenience provides all the food you want or need without having to think a lick. it takes time to develop conscious awareness within yourself. it takes time spent alone listening, communing with breath and body. it takes love and appreciation for yourself enough to give yourself the time for this practice. convenience requires nothing from you except—lack of time and lack of conscious awareness.
life can be totally fun when you’re asleep and living the convenient life, but life is enriched 10 fold when you are consciously aware and can see beyond the surface to the depths of your existence in this world.
this human you’ve been gifted to care for is 100% your responsibility. you can choose to rise up and assume accountability for it or, you can let the food industry shove their convenience down your throat until you’re so sick that you feel you must ask for help from a doctor who will just treat your symptoms with pills rather than explain to you that the convenience you’re putting in your mouth every day is what keeps you sick.
whatever reasons you have for choosing the things you do, are YOUR reasons. you can choose to change if you please, or choose to stay the same if it’s more convenient for you.