Quotes to Spin a Life With

“Eating with the fullest pleasure – pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance – is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world.” Michael Pollan (my emphasis)

Yes, another example of how eating and food can be tied to and used as a metaphor for life itself. Eating gives and perpetuates life, as a simple and base definition, as an operation. But one may also use this act as a way to understand and approach life. The first word in this quote may as well be conversing, singing, laughing, learning, whatever... The fact of the matter is, ignorance deteriorates every experience, weakens every thought, impairs every movement and dilutes every argument. To build a connection with the world on the basis of ignorance will at once rot that connection, just as food, forgotten, is soon consumed by mold.


“And that simply means you’ve got to have people who insist that their food comes from good farms, and that means they’ve got to recognize what a good farm is.” Wendell Berry, from Gourmet, February 2008 (my emphasis)

Again, if you apply this food-specific idea on a life-size scale, it holds true: (perhaps this is the mark of a good statement – if it checks out in more than one realm of specificity, then it can be held as widely true) To hold yourself and others to any sort of value, to even employ any sort of value system, to recognize good as good, fair as fair, one must first recognize what that good, fair, defining value, is. The form must be there. The experience must be there. The understanding must be there.