wayneholland.org

 

EATING

July 24, 2010

 

The habit of eating is a perfectly natural (not to mention absolutely necessary) activity. This is so evident that it seems at first a bit absurd to even make such an observation.

But there is a particular kind of eating that I have lately started to pay closer attention to. I am referring to the daily ritual of eating meals.

It is my belief that the practice of involving ourselves with (if not downright immersing ourselves in) what we call meals is more of a social convention than a natural human proclivity.

We are irresistibly compelled to eat, but socially predisposed to have a meal.

For thousands of years human beings hunted and gathered their food, with the result that they ate whenever they succeeded at such endeavors. And they ate whatever they managed to hunt or gather.

The custom of having regular meals developed along with the rise of agriculture.

Being the counterculture freak that I am (this is a counterculture website in case you hadn't noticed), I find that I am increasingly annoyed with the very concept of meals. (And having a meal is indeed a concept, as opposed to an actual event, like eating.)

Am I just wallowing in semantics here?

I will admit that it does look like it at first. But it is really more than that.

You could object, for example, that the word meals is only a word that we like to use to refer to the act of eating.

To which I would have to reply that the word God is also only a word (with emphasis on only) that we use to refer to the ultimate mystery behind all of existence. Is this also an instance of being merely semantic?

Somehow, I don't think so.

I suppose the easiest way to sum up my feelings about meals is to talk about them in terms of formality. The basic, and absolutely essential, act of eating is quite often spontaneous, little more than a primal response to a pang of hunger.

But the preference for having a meal is anything but spur of the moment. In conjunction with a meal we often find ourselves using such words as preparation and planning.

There is, in other words, more of a cerebral element attached to the idea of having a meal than there is to the act of simply eating.

The marketplace takes full advantage of the meal concept, and its inescapable net sweeps far and wide in an effort to seduce the ever-hungry (and hopelessly gullible) consumer into parting with their hard-earned disposable income in an effort to satisfy this socially-conditioned pastime. (The most widely-known eating establishment in the world has even dubbed its least distinguished menu offering with the oxymoronic name Happy Meal.)

I rarely have meals any more. I am increasingly inclined to indulge in a modern form of hunter-gathering. Whenever I get hungry I just go into the kitchen and look (hunt) for something to eat.