Nutrition
A report from the Slow Lane
It is good to know
what food is for, and where to find it. My body thanks me, and this knowledge,
everyday. The discovery of a new kind
of food, was never on my drawing board, not anticipated, and actually more than
a little difficult to take in. I don’t mean that is has been difficult to
swallow, I mean that it has defied all my expectations. At my present age (68),
I thought I knew enough about food that I didn’t t have to think about it much.
But, a new kind of nutritional food has graced my life, and I’m trying to
digest it. That is what this SL is all about.
There is a kind of
social food that I didn’t know I’ve been starving for. It is an invisible, non-palpable,
food that makes the heavenly scenario of us humans feeding each other,
something even more miraculous. Many people know of the scenario of people
feeding each other, with the assertion this is what we humans are capable of.
But what isn’t so apparent is the kind of mutual feeding, which goes on when we
share ourselves with each other. That is a feast of another sort.
What I’m trying to
get at is the kind of nutrition that is provided when human beings get together,
and really share themselves with each other.
This can be soul — food, invisible, not taken in with the mouth, and deeply satisfying. This kind of
co-constructed food is laced with meaning, intimacy, feelings, and human awe.
It occurs in deep silence, and when two or more are gathered. It is utterly
unique, moment bound, and profoundly mysterious. Somehow, this food, makes real
just how hugely connected we are to each other, and to this incredible
immensity we find ourselves within.
No wonder I hunger
for it! Any gathering holds this kind of possibility. And I go away from too
many meetings not only empty and dissatisfied, but in truth, malnourished. I
didn’t know it, but I’m there, as much to find this invisible food, as I am for
any group’s purpose. I often go away from gatherings dismayed and debilitated,
smaller and less alive, shrunken by this unknown, unfulfilled hunger.
As I’ve grown older,
I have at last identified the food I hunger for. I know something about how
I’ve grown distorted, shrunken, empty and senseless because I’ve abided with
this hunger without recognizing it. A few days ago, as I read Francis Weller’s
book on grief (The Wild Edge of Sorrow), I realized I was riddled with sorrow
about living as a shrunken, malnourished, flattened shade of myself. I am a zombie,
more dead than alive, desiccated by hunger — a sad hungry zombie.
This realization, as
painful as it is, is also liberating. One advantage of growing older is that I
no longer fool myself about having forever to rebalance things. Death is too
near. So, instead of just being alarmed, I’m going to make sure I get enough of
this nutrient. That means I have to offer myself, as part of the ingredients of
the nourishment I seek. I want to enter the social fray and be one of the
cooks. I want to eat heartily.
I can feel in me a
new awareness growing. I’m leaving the
ranks of the vampires, forever hungry for someone else’s blood, and returning
to being human again. What I’m hungering for is now my criteria for any real
social gathering. I want to be capable of a more public intimacy because I know
that is how to stimulate the greater nourishment I seek. I am hungry for human
interaction, not the cultural nicety of politeness, but the gritty desperation
of other hearts befuddled and broken by the mystery of existence.
I’ve been starved
long enough. Malnourishment is no longer the way I’m going to go about this
life. I’m hungry for the real stuff. Human interaction. By that, I mean real
contact. I’m so tired of being nice, polite, and silent. I want to cower before
the real burdens we humans share, just as I want to exult over the miracle we
get to share.
There is a social
food, which feeds we social animals. I learned about it late in life. I knew I
was hungering. I just didn’t know what for. It turns out to be something that
only occurs when we get together. It is social food. And, its nutritional value is up to us.
l/d
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For more pieces like this, go to http://www.elderssalon2.blogspot.com (2014 on)
To hear archived versions of our radio program Growing An Elder Culture go to www.elderculture.com
To read excerpts, or otherwise learn, about Embracing Life: Toward A Psychology of
Interdependence go to http://www.davidgoff.net
