“Where did that go?” I asked in mock disbelief.
My son pointed to his stomach, proudly showing that he ate the whole thing. There are times when kids just seem to consume any food they can get their hands on, and even then it is not enough. (On the flip side, of course there are plenty of times when they refuse to eat the beautifully prepared, healthy meal which they loved last week but is intolerable to them today. This is not our focus for now, so let’s move on and forget that happens.)
Things get inhaled rather than eaten. There is no way that they could have tasted it on the way down and it barely touched the sides. In those moments, food is just a source of making the hunger go away, and there is no appreciation for what it took to acquire and prepare the disappearing commodity.
I think it can be the same with any area of life in which we have an appetite, be that for actual food or for experiences, stuff or status. We can find ourselves taking for granted what we have and just consume it as something that exists purely for our own ends. That kind of consumption leads to a fairly soulless experience. This is what’s often called the hedonic treadmill where we tend to adapt to what we have, then keep searching for more and more without the sense of feeling satisfied.
Or as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing from prison during the Second World War, put it, “It is only with gratitude that life becomes rich”.
If you carry no gratitude for the things in your life, then nothing will ever be enough.
If you are grateful for what you already have, anything else you get feels like abundance.
So, during your next meal, slow down, actually taste it, and thank whoever made it (even if it was you).
