Essential Food

Nothing can survive without food. Everything we consume acts either to heal us or to poison us. We tend to think of nourishment only as what we take in through our mouths, but what we consume with our eyes, our ears, our noses, our tongues, and our bodies is also food. The conversations going on around us, and those we participate in, are also food. Are we consuming and creating the kind of food that is healthy for us and helps us grow?

When we say something that nourishes us and uplifts the people around us, we are feeding love and compassion. When we speak and act in a way that causes tension and anger, we are nourishing violence and suffering.

We often ingest toxic communication from those around us and from what we watch and read. Are we ingesting things that grow our understanding and compassion? If so, that’s good food. Often, we ingest communication that makes us feel bad or insecure about ourselves or judgmental and superior to others. We can think about our communication in terms of nourishment and consumption. The Internet is an item of consumption, full of nutrients that are both healing and toxic. It’s so easy to ingest a lot in just a few minutes online. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use the Internet, but you should be conscious of what you are reading and watching.

When you work with your computer for three or four hours, you are totally lost. It’s like eating french fries. You shouldn’t eat french fries all day, and you shouldn’t be on the computer all day. A few french fries, a few hours, are probably all most of us need.
What you read and write can help you heal, so be thoughtful about what you consume. When you type a comment that is full of understanding and compassion, you are nourishing yourself during the time you write that message. Even if it’s short, everything you’re writing down can nourish you and the person to whom you are writing