I am such a dilettante.
When I was
in college my housemates and I used to fast
one day a week. We all chose a slightly different model, but I chose not to
eat anything but just drink water or juice from bedtime on Saturdays until I
woke up Monday mornings.
Our
fasting was a mindfulness practice. It was a tangible way to connect us to the 842 million people in the
world do not have enough to eat. Every time our stomachs rumbled, we
remembered those people…like the 3 year-old boy I’d met the summer before in
Nueva Vida who weighed 13 pounds.
After
college I didn’t keep up the fasting, and then later I had children and was
breastfeeding…which makes optional
fasting not only unwise and also really difficult– I was ravenous all the time!
But this
year I have a new motto. It is la cabeza
piensa donde pisan los pies/ the head thinks where the feet stand. I thought it was time I tried again to stand where
the hungry are. Fasting for just one day can’t be that hard, I thought.
Boy, was I
wrong.
I don’t
know if I was just really tough 15 years ago, or if the mists of time have
made me forget how hard it was before, or if my body chemistry changed having
kids or what, but…
I couldn’t do it. I thought I’d get to
the end of the day and be a little grumpy and then go to bed early. Hah!
By 3
o’clock I was shouting at people and scowling.
By 4 o’clock I was crying on shoulders .
By 5
o’clock I was miserably eating a banana in defeat.
How can it
be that 1 in every 8 people in the
world suffers from chronic undernourishment – meaning they never get enough to eat –
and yet I couldn’t do it for even one
day?
I am a
wimp.
But let me
tell you, my failure at fasting gave me better insight into what so many people
have to endure all the time. By the
end of the day I was a total wreck, incapable of making a decision. How hard must it be then for people who
endure hunger day in and day out to make decisions for their families?
Every time
my stomach grumbled, I thought about food. Every time I saw food I wanted to
shove it in my mouth…instead I would turn up the glow on my halo a little
and walk virtuously on by. How hard must
it be then for those who are hungry for real
to walk by food stalls in the market and not just snatch it and run? 1.5 million Nicaraguans are malnourished. In a country of 6.2 million.
I felt dizzy. I had to sit down. How hard must it be then for people who
don’t get enough to eat to work all day, especially in physical labor,
especially under a hot sun as so many do?
I was
distracted. I couldn’t focus. How hard
must it be then for children who are hungry to concentrate in school? Nearly
half of all Nicaraguan children suffer from malnutrition. One in five children in the U.S. suffer from
hunger.
I may have
failed to keep my fast for a whole day, but maybe I didn’t totally fail to
place my feet – however fleetingly – on the path to understanding those with
real hunger a little better. – Becca
