Broken Connections Part One

The planet Earth provides all the basics we need to survive air, water and the earth elements that build our food. It’s a wonderful, bonded relationship of nature and nurture amongst the substances and each of the eight billion people and uncounted species on the planet. Just as in your human relationships, you have good habits that keep balance between you so that the enduring fabric of your life together is equal exchange. Balance in exchange is the key to any happy and productive relationship.

Give a thought to this: is your relationship with the Earth elements

that create your food balanced and a source of renewed happiness?

For example, my purchase of organic blueberries in an Ohio store in winter creates happiness in me. I wonder if it equally wise for me and the planet? I’m less happy with my choice of these delicacies when I start to add up what it costs the planet to provide me this choice.

The elements that create food on our planet are elaborate interconnected systems. The human food systems are elaborate systems. These complex systems combined with our human habits are depleting resources in predictable and yet many unseen ways. Admittedly, it’s a tangle of responsibility to figure out how to make responsible choices that are best for yourself that still benefit the planet. I liken it to climate change. The topic has so many different moving parts that any “argument” someone cares to take a position on, has evidence at hand.

I will only be describing my current state of consciousness from where I base my choices now. My intention and dream in this life is the creation of a loving and renewable relationship with all the planetary resources to create a thriving life energy for the myself and the planet. I am not a model of perfection, but thoughtful progress is moving me in the right direction!

Here is my process. First, I mentally sort out what is an indulgence for myself and what is necessary for my best maintenance. That is such a personal, individual and daily-sometimes hourly shifting decision, it can’t be written. What starts out as needs can often end up as unnecessary indulgences and vice versa. One piece of chocolate is heavenly and opens the blood vessels and stabilizes mood. Is two pieces better or just a really nice sensation? Choosing and balancing in moderation between what is good for me and what is excess is the goal. Deepak Chopra said a great thing I often use to evaluate what I am purchasing or eating. I paraphrase here:

Let me not indulge pain until it becomes suffering

or indulge pleasure until it becomes addiction.

These are very wise guidelines in this fad culture of indulgence. Everything in our first world of privilege engages our senses to push us past the normal setpoints of the body in human experience. This addiction to sensation creates excess in many choice point areas of the day as moods and triggers shift our body/mind needs. Food (and shopping!) are easiest to measure.

We are being trained to take indulgences as needs. Excess is taken for granted. Our increasingly out of control sensory input sees and registers in the brain excess as the new need. It has become the new normal to have dessert with a meal. Or snacks. Or double size anything. Food is a drug. It creates the same impact on the nervous system. People who won’t take an aspirin will go to Mc-anything and pick up a seriously damaged bag of chemically treated food that sedates the cause of the headache. More disturbing is the addictive quality of the “hit” from those chemicals. Twelve step programs for fast food addiction is not a light suggestion on my part. It could save your life as you recognize that chemical triggers and habits have replaced physical set points in your body.

Our creative ability with magnificent abundance of food has outpaced our genuine needs and caused serious foundational stress to the basic resources of the planet. The global result of this indulgence has emphasized the widening gap of poverty in the middle and third world cultures. My blueberries in winter in Ohio are not a direct result of someone’s starvation in a third world country but it is representative of the belief systems that are playing out globally.

This imbalance of resources is a rip in the fabric of human connection and relationship.

I heard a wonderful TED talk from Abigail Disney. She is a Disney grandchild and an activist for change at the corporate level. She sees these imbalances and speaks out against the human abuses in the Disney corporation. No, this is not specific to food, but it is a recognition that these imbalances are not a mistake that will swing back into balance. These are carefully calculated positions and choices driven by money and based in greed. Impoverished value of human life in the areas that control our resources will result in impoverished relationships in humans.  Her talk details the slide of valued Disney employees to current human abuses of the usual part time, low pay, no benefits jobs that manipulate job laws and kneecap any unionization. She mentioned the not unusual situation of a young woman who played Cinderella to smiles and loving audiences every day. Would any of us believe Cinderella was sleeping in her car every night as a low paid, less than living wage “performer”. Listening, I wept with the loss of belief in the promised Disney magical Dream of my 1950’s childhood. A dream unfulfilled dies like a “raisin in the Sun.” My adult self is now strengthened in supporting the shared human dream. I believe the shared dream of all most good people is for self and others to live a life of fulfilling work for fair pay.

As in all relationships, being used and taken for granted puts a real dent in the fabric of a loving connection. This pattern of separating ourselves from planetary source connections creates the same barriers in being loving and compassionate to our fellow humans. Loving the planet resources and loving each other cannot be separated without consequences. Losing love for others is a warning bell that loss of self-love is not far behind.

I know that as I consciously choose my food as a need,

I am sourcing and respecting the planet and all other’s needs as well.