When one's life is on hold for others, they probably don't go more than three hours without thinking about food. From infant, to baby, to child into adulthood, the process of being fed is a really big, really time consuming process. Over the roughly 43,680 hours I've spent thinking, shopping, preparing and cleaning up food for those I love, I've learned a couple of things. Strangely though, the most significant thing is about oxygen.
My daughter recently came home from college, where she had a class on nutrition. After discussing something, she asked me, "how do you know so much- you didn't study it in school did you?" No Jessica, I got a real life course at the cost of 43,680 life hours!! And through that one learns a lot about what people need. They need dinner. And not just food, they need dinner. Walking into your house after a busy, crazy day out in the world, and smelling dinner speaks volumes, saying your are loved. You are home.
I've learned that if you go very long without a meal that includes parts - part vegetable, part starch, part meat, part fruit, etc. then the stress level of the entire house goes up. I've learned that there is something about a meal that fills an emotional need.
I've also learned that it is a lot of work to do that meal after meal, day after day, year after year. And rarely, because every day it is on the table, does it really even get any attention. Generally it is only the lack of keeping people fed that causes attention- negative, stressful attention. I've come to realize that meals are just like oxygen. Taken for granted until they're not there.
As I've pondered the immensely important role it is to provide a simple, life-giving element, I've discovered something else - it doesn't feel that fulfilling being oxygen. I feel like it would be so much more fulfilling being a firework.
As humans we are not generally that happy, content, fulfilled giving the basics of life. Even if that gift stabilizes the lives of those we love and allows them to grow and live and be. It's almost like the more important our efforts are in the successful lives of others, the less we feel fulfilled by it. We have to remind ourselves that what we are doing is important. We know in our souls that the lives of those we love would crash and leave scars and pain if we were not there giving, and yet we still long to be the firework: big, beautiful, loud, center of attention.
What is it about our human nature that makes us think that everyone all around us has to look and say "aughh" to make us feel important? Even when you logically know it's the opposite? Why in the world does providing the basics of life not feel important? It doesn't make sense, yet there it is.
What I've learned through a life of providing that basic element of food, is that sometimes how much you "feel" important isn't really an true indicator of how important you really are.
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