I Ate What?

Throughout my life I have always been reminded of my mortality by the accumulation of years. Double my age and compare that number to people who are at that age and I have a benchmark of what I can expect. I can remember when I considered the age of 30 as old. My view of 30 was defined by people whose best years were behind them. They had peaked in school and now were living the routine: get up, go to work, come home, eat supper, watch some TV, go to bed - repeat.

Kung fu has allowed me to literally preserve my youth. I feel like I am in the same shape and condition now with the same mental outlook as when I was in high school. I am always looking ahead and I am excited about the prospects the future holds.

Lately I have begun to notice that my perspective of my mortality has shifted. I haven’t been predicting the quality of time I have left by doubling my age, I have been basing my mortality assessment by what I perceive to be our society’s inevitable demise. How much longer can the earth sustain our present consumption rate of her resources? As a large portion of the earth’s population is starving, the rest of us continue to waste and consume in an effort to sustain the unsustainable.

With that in mind, my Student UBBT Team has begun a project for the month of August. We will be documenting everything we eat this month in a group journal. I believe the project will make us all more mindful of what we put into our bodies and the impact our choices have on the planet. This will lead to positive, permanent lifestyle changes for many of us. My hope is that the public nature of the project will create a greater awareness for everyone who reads it and maybe, just maybe, the seeds of change will have been planted.

“You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing there will be no result” - Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)