E ating - Receiving Energy

I used to think of “eating” as only food that entered my stomach, but now I see it as any form of energy that comes through my senses. Our choices of what to eat are essential to our ability to use our “tool of vision.” For example, in terms of edible food, we might eat a particular food and experience the affects of it seconds or hours later. Or it might have an effect that could trigger us to decide that we absolutely do not want to eat this food again for the rest of our lives. Or we might crave it every day.

If we broaden our perspectives of eating, we might realize that, from the moment we rise in the morning, we start eating. We eat the temperature of the room and how the daylight makes us feel. We can eat all kinds of things. We consume the energy of our kids waking up nervously from a bad dream or our anxiety about starting a day at work. Maybe we eat the fact that we might be single and longing for a partner to wake up next to or wondering how to fix our troubled relationships. As a result, we can still be digesting the energy we consumed yesterday, in the past month, and so on. Many of these experiences can alter so much, including our health.

Anyone who knew my dad even vaguely knew that he loved to eat. Outside of his eggs, toast, soup, and big Italian meals, what else did he love to eat? It was all the kinds of energy, be it music, traveling, church, the courtroom, nature, his family, or friends. His menu went on and on. I think most of all he enjoyed the process of eating and being in the company of the people surrounding him at the above dinner tables. Sometimes, it seemed that no one could stop him from eating all of the above energy or even just his lunch. (I can only reflect on and laugh at the times when I was a young kid sitting in the back of the courtroom, watching my dad argue a decisive civil case and asking the judge if he could approach the bench. He argued his case as to why he needed to have his lunch at this very moment, which ironically was usually granted, so even the law could not stop him.)

Most outcomes of his eating were positive because of his pure motivation toward the happiness of others, as well as himself. Some might have noticed that my dad would sometimes overeat. When I look at one of my dad’s overeating habits, I formulate the hypothesis that perhaps he failed when it came to respecting the power of the sun. As he consumed its energy, any moment. Often, it was at its strongest for hours, year after year, until the year came when he saw and felt the affects of his unbalanced consumption. He developed skin cancer. And then the day came where he could not eat any longer, and his mind and body moved on.

That was just one effect of his choice of eating. Another affect was my dad’s hunger for life, and as a result, this eating habit has been instilled in so many that he left behind. How did my dad digest and work out all of his energy? It was often with his tools to communicate, mostly his voice, a voice that inspired me to write and a voice that always told me:

“Nothing gets to the intellect that doesn’t go through the senses.”