The Fast And The Feast
On Realizing How Rich One Is By Having Nothing
One week might not seem like a lot, but when that week is filled with a whole lot of nothing, coming back is like gaining superpowers.
Two months ago I joined a week long mental and physical fast. The concept is simple. One week alone in the forest with nothing but a tent and a sleeping bag.
Besides getting water from a nearby lake and sharing my body with various blood sucking and flesh-eating bugs, there was absolutely nothing to do but gaze out and in.
This story is not about what I found hidden in my sleeping bag one night or how I cried at the thought that my tent was all that stood between me and freezing to death as the floodgates of heaven turned my little patch of forest into a swamp.
No, this story is about the first thing I ate on the seventh day, lessons learned, and all the other things I ate that seventh day.
Tangerine Dreams
Describing tastes and smells is notoriously hard. It is probably because they can’t be mapped out in a relational space to each other (like visual or auditory experiences can). So when I, in the following paragraph, try to instill the taste of that first tangerine, know that it in no way compares.
I put the first slice in my mouth early in the morning. It didn’t taste much, protected as it was by its soft skin. Then I bit down and my brain exploded. Luscious, extravagant, aromatically exquisite sunshine played jazz in my mouth. The kind that plays in the background when you’re laying in a rowing boat, bobbing around the French riviera. It was the sweetest ambrosia of life the Gods of Olympus ever drank.
How could food taste this good? I mean, food always tastes good, amazing even. But this good? Come on!
After that first hit, my mind frantically conjured a short list of all the delicacies I needed to try immediately. I was like a newly hatched bird clamoring for more. MORE!
How curious we humans are. After one week of being weaned of the tit of all our modern luxuries and comforts, my first instinct was to consume everything. I felt like Galactus, devourer of worlds.
However, eating too much after an extended fast can be dangerous. The body is not prepared and needs gradual habituation to the kind of feasting so common in the western world.
So it is with our modern consumerist lifestyle. The Earth can’t handle it. No wonder our insatiable appetite has brought about ecological destruction and devastation.
Modern comforts
Lengthy treatises have been written on why fasting is good for us. I believe there’s an analogue for modern civilization here too (perhaps we need a collective fast?), but let’s focus on the individual level.
Fasting is beneficial on three levels.
First of all, it’s healthy. The body starts devouring senescent cells and cleaning out old junk that is never prioritized in our frantic, full speed ahead lifestyles.
Second, it’s an excellent reminder of all that we take for granted. A comfy bed, tap water, social interaction, temperature controlled and bug free environments, and so on. Everything you don’t have when in the forest all alone.
Finally, having no stimuli is like starving our dopamine addicted attention deficit disordered selves. How long can you go without the urge to check Facebook or Twitter? My eyes dart to my phone laying next to me, even as I’m writing this.
The funny thing is, when you take away all modern day comforts, all distractions, all the noise, you’re suddenly left with your own thoughts.
How unsettling.
Anyway, let me tell you about carbonized juice!
Weightlessness
After the tangerine followed a date made by angels, porridge so voluptuous you’d not believe it was porridge, and a fig produced by the hands of Persephone herself. But what really lifted my spirit, literally, was a glass of carbonated apple juice.
A million tiny bubbles squeezed into a fluid can produce the most astonishing effect: weightlessness! That’s what I felt when chugging that glass (there is no other way to drink after fasting, at least not without exerting some degree of self-control).
I actually giggled with each mouthful. Every bubble popping in my mouth was like a mini Wingardium Leviosa spell against my palate. I literally floated off the tip of my toes as I soared into heaven with Beethoven’s 9th in the background.
Hallelujah. Heaven in a glass of juice. So simple, yet so profound.
Less, not more
It’s hard to imagine running out of things to think about when occupied by our daily life. But when thinking is all you can do then thinking gets old fast. What’s left is a state of peaceful contentment. Wallowing in that state of presence made my attention so utterly tuned to my sensations that when the fast ended, everything felt amazing.
What’s more, though, I realized how little I needed to be happy. Ordinarily, I’m searching for the answer, that one thing that’ll complete the picture. Funnily enough, I kinda found it when I had nothing.
Sitting in the forest, I realized that what I was missing wasn’t more, but less! And when you have less, more is frickin awesome!
Until you have too much.
Then you become constipated.
Full stop
After the fizzy drink, I returned home. There, I raided the fridge and the cupboard. Potato chips so crisp that you’d require an IMAX cinema to get the full experience, toast that’d make even a fish salivate, and the grand finale: pizza with garlic sour cream. No poem written by humans can capture such a marvel.
But overconsumption has a price.
I knew one should be careful after a fast, but I couldn’t control myself. I was weak. Too many temptations for my super sensitive nervous system to pass up on.
I payed the price in a 4 day long blockage of my lower intestine.
As trivial and minute as this account of my savory adventure might be (and I’ll spare you the details of my bowel movements), it is nonetheless a lesson in overconsumption.
What happens when we get lured into the belief that we can fully satiate our cravings? What happens when we hunt so greedily for more, more, more? What are the effects of endless distraction and boundless comforts?
We get constipated, nauseated, and sick.
Eventually, we’re so full of shit that we take life for granted. We become unable to really appreciate the moment in all its richness. And we believe that the answer to our misery is a lack of something.
We become like the greedy King Midas who, unsatisfied with all his riches, wished that everything he touched would turn to gold.
One day, he touched his daughter.
That’s when it’s time to wash one's hand in the river Pactolus.
Or do an extended fast.