Published: October 13, 2024 at 10:28 PM EDT
I'm about 73 hours into a 72-hour water only fast.
Early humans didn't
have the privelege of eating 3+ meals a day. They couldn't push a button and instantly get food
delivered to them. Going without food for just some time is a meaningful practice in not only asceticism
but getting back to our roots.
This is my first time fasting and I told myself I would finish
this site (hook it up to a domain and deploy it) before I could eat. That includes making
an initial blog post. I'm listening to a mix of Metallica's Black Album and Choipin's Nocturnes to get
me through it.
The fast is serving several purposes:
1) teaching me about asceticism
2) forcing me to get this site
into a presentable state
3) putting my body in a state of elevated autophagy
4)
coincidentally fasting during Yom Kipppur
During the course of my fast, I've learned a
little about myself and understand a bit more about why people fast. I've never restricted myself from
food for this long and to be honest, I feel quite focused and pretty good.
Now that I've passed
72 hours, it's become very apparent to me how dependent we are on external goods and services to keep
our lives going - a lot of which is supplementary. At face value this realization might sound silly to
have derived from fasting - but consider that we feed ourselves many times a day when we don't actually
need to in order to survive.
Food is a basic need. Consider what's further up the hierarchy that
we're in a deep surplus of... Superficial relationships? Products?
Services? Information (maybe)?
A lot of us are living in incredible surplus.
Remember, a lot of us reading this can:
- Access clean
water instantly.
- Order food with the press of a button.
- Learn about virtually any existing
knowledge with the press of a couple buttons.
- Be transported hundreds of miles in several hours by
sitting in a chair.
- Speak to any living person and video conference with them.
- Entertain
yourself for an infinite amount of time with a metal box that sits in your hand.
- Receive packages
containing virtually any product within days, sometimes hours.
-Instantly experience music from any
time, culture, or genre.
My point here is that relative to our basic needs and a bit further up, we are most definitely
living in a surplus. Yet - we are conditioned to believe we need new products and services to fulfill
ourselves.
Anyway, I could be wrong and you could see it differently - and that's alright.
I'm
going to finish this up now so that I can go eat a cheeseburger or something.