Consciousness and the Story of the Solitary Grape

I have been researching bananas for my first issue topic on my blog. In the process I have found that the thing I am striving for the most out of this experience and the concept I want to stress the most is consciousness. How people use or ignore this newly-acquired consciousness is up to them.

I want to be conscious of what I am buying, conscious of the effects of my actions. I want to inspire people to want to know where in the world their food is coming from and how it is grown. I want them to think about how food production affects people’s lives- especially those growing the food. And I want to feel grateful for what I have access to, in order to recognize what many do not have.

I once went to a seminar in which each participant was given a single grape. We were told to eat it as if this was the last grape we would ever eat. In the span of a few minutes I looked at this grape, I chewed it slowly and focused on considering its flavor. This was the part of the seminar that I remember the most. I won’t say it was the best grape I ever had, giving in to cliché, but it was certainly the most conscious I have ever been while eating. I feel like most of the time eating involves shoveling down whatever you require to continue on with your day- maybe while watching tv or reading. Tomorrow I will challenge myself to consider what I am eating in the silent lack of entertainment such as tv or books.

I will continue on with the banana research (which is turning out to be way more involved than I thought) and hope to have enough to create a posting by Sunday. Thanks for reading!