When I was really young I had such trouble eating and holding my food down. I don't know, I guess my stomach was just really sensitive as a child. I remember being the only one in nursery sitting in the dark cafeteria with my teacher watching me take very small bites of my lunch, chewing ever-so-slowly with disgust. It was frustrating for her, you could tell by the look on her face. But it was even worse for me. It was painful.
It wasn't until the 6th grade that I started to really enjoy food. I still wasn't eating all that much but at least I wasn't throwing away my entire lunch everyday or giving it all to my friends. [[ Sorry, Mom! ]] I found that I had this ridiculous love for red meat and mangoes and jelly beans and oreo cookies. Yepp, that was about it.
Come 7th grade when I started playing sports and getting really active in school, I was constantly craving food and particularly meat. I suppose it was the protein and iron my body liked so much, and with the way my dad grilled those bad boys, it became quite evident that my fave food in the world was steak. All kinds of steak. T-Bone steak, Porterhouse steak, Ribeye steak... If you said the word "steak" then I was there ready to eat. Mouth salivating and all, as it is right now.
I was also big into chicken legs, but seriously who isn't?!? My parents would laugh every time I ate any kind of meat because all that would be left was the bone. Completely naked. No cartilage, no traces of meat, nada. And the T-Bone steaks? Same deal.
Fast forwarding to 2009, I was at a pretty low time in my life and I needed something to fill the void in my spirit. It wasn't that I was completely unhappy, it wasn't that I was completely unhealthy, I just didn't feel whole. So I began to think about my life and reflect.
With my friends all being of diverse backgrounds, I was always surrounded with such practices as Lent and Ramadan. Fasting is not something I ever wanted to do because I'm not religious (although I'm very spiritual) and I never believed in dieting, which in my mind meant starving or depriving myself. But then I realized how much more there was to it. There was a matter of sacrifice and patience and refocusing on what really mattered. It suddenly dawned on me that I needed to sacrifice something special, something I truly loved.
You guessed it! I chose to sacrifice my love for meat.
With more thought, I decided I didn't want to just sacrifice for a certain period of time but rather do it all year round. I chose to give up my Wednesdays because I was given life on a Wednesday in 1986 and it only made sense to me to spare the lives of all living animals on that very same day.
What you have to understand is that it's not just a matter of sacrificing meat. It is a day I truly focus on my life. I become mindful of everything I have, everything I do, and everything I am. I become mindful of the purity of life, of the air I breathe, of the love that surrounds me. And this awareness, this mindfulness, it brings me back to the Now and the Here and it makes me humble all over again.
See, we all tend to get carried away in our every day lives with work and traffic and partying and stress. We forget what's really important and we take for granted all that we have. We complain about the smallest of things while the rest of the world would die just to experience a day in our shoes.
While we all have our own belief systems and go about things differently, we're all actually very alike. I found what works for me at the age of 23 and I have stuck to it ever since. Find what nurtures your mind, body and soul. Find what brings together all the elements of your world and you will find true happiness.
#Namaste
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