Stay Hungry

Random bits and bites for the day.

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A while back I read several books by Michael Pollan, mostly revolving around Americans and their food habits. One of the edicts I garnered, maybe even indirectly, was that 'we' tend to eat until our plates are empty, or we get to the point of feeling 'full'.

Michael's advice was this: eat only until you are NOT hungry, stop eating before you are full. This sounds like a small distinction, but think about it. How much more do we eat when we keep eating until we are full? I think its a lot. I have been practicing another tactic too: at least once a day, I wait until I am really hungry before I eat, instead of letting the clock dictate when I eat.

I've lost 2 pounds of my extra 7 already in just one week. I'm hungry a lot. Sometimes its hard to sit with this hunger, because my immediate response is to satisfy the craving and put something in my mouth.

But sit I do.

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Quote from Steve Jobs, which I really liked. This was from a commencement speech he gave.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."..........“And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

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I've suppressed or worn out another kind of hunger. The hunger for gear. I have multiples of most everything now. So I think that hunger for the next best thing has finally past. I finally reached a point of satiation. Running gear? Got it covered. Camping gear? Got it covered. Kayaking gear? More than covered, and I am selling some of it off. Biking gear? Got it covered with a lot of used stuff that's good enough. Backpacking gear? Well, there is always something that looks enticing, but if I take a lesson from my adventures in tents: I'll stick with what I have.

That hunger. That desire for the 'next thing'. Really, all we want is for the desire and hunger to go away. Because if we are smart, and we are paying attention, we realize that the having isn't nearly as fun as the getting.

But after a while, you get tired of the getting too. Gil Fronsdal, a renowned Buddhist philosophy teacher once said we shouldn't be called human BE-ings, we should be called human DESIRE-lings. We can't just seem to be, we are always moving, always getting, always hungry.

As we get older, I think we start to see the rock of Sisyphus more clearly. We finally tire of it, and just don't want to push that boulder up that damn hill anymore. For some folks I am sure they just move onto a different stone, but for me, I just see more pushing.

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Lately I've been much more intellectually hungry. I have a appetite for knowledge right now, that seems to have me heading in several directions. That hunger is a passion for a all kinds of different subjects: The life of Descartes, the understanding of logical argument and common fallacies, Some business related topics, like Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point, the Culture and effectiveness of Corporate meetings, the continued arguments about the existence of god, Buddhist Psychology.

Its hard to find time to fit it all in. But its always: One page at a time.

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That's all for today and this week. I am headed to Ironwood, MI for 4 days of Cross Country skiing and Winter Camping.