I remember it vividly. I had only recently arrived on the ground in Mexico at Le Gran Fiesta, a wonderful Christian three-day event near Jutchiton in the state of Oaxaca. I was assigned to washing and dicing about 5000 tomatoes for the crowd; the cooks would make homemade salsa for lunch and dinner. Just off to the left of my work station I noticed a tied-up cow. Nice.
About two hours later, after I came back from using the outhouse, I noticed that the cow was laying down. “Huh,” I thought…but just kept walking. As I took my place to keep dicing, I glanced around the corner to see the cow only to realize the animal wasn’t laying down, but rather was in the process of being butchered for the next day’s meals. Having never been that close to a butcher working, I was a bit taken aback…but noticed that everyone was pretty calm about the entire process.
On that day, I chalked it up more to just a bit of evidence that I certainly am not in the USA right now. However, on the following day, I was again near that same spot when I noticed the farmer who was hosting the event had his guys driving another cow out of the fields. Before long, it was clear that this cow too was about to become prepared for another meal. This time, I watched the entire episode from the start, and as I did, a new dawning came into my mind.
For the majority of the people I saw around me, mostly farmers from roughly 100-300 miles away (many of whom had walked to the Festival), there was a clear realization that this wealthy farmer was making a tremendous financial investment. The cow was not merely some thing, but represented a clear item of worth. I thought quickly to the truck I had seen full of mangoes that another farmer had brought. To the women sitting around an open flame and many hundred gallon pot cooking, while another group of women were busily making tortillas. In fact, I think every item was something made right there or had been grown on nearby farms.
In other words, nothing had been cheaply bought.
This was the moment when I began to think of the culture within the USA. As I have been saying, we are sick with a gluttony…BUT, there is a second complementary issue: we are disconnected from the land. We no longer have any grasp of the true costs of things, especially in terms of food. In place of that, we now have adopted a viewpoint that suggests everything should be simply given to us easily…rather than understanding that everything takes effort, energy and time. Everything in our society now can be acquired by the click of a button on our phone.
It’s not our fault. Who doesn’t like easy? Having grown a garden of food through my childhood, I know it’s not fun pulling weeds or even harvesting in the heat. But as we shifted from a majority agrarian world to a consumer one, we have lost so much. For so many of the students I see, the idea that diligent effort is demanded to learn becomes a major hurdle. I see this with people who wish to have better health or for those wanting a more stable financial footing, getting out of debt. We want the final product without having to actually put in the work.
But this path of ease has really become a path of laziness, of a people who no longer can truly determine value. Because things are given cheaply, the value appropriated is also cheapness. That plate of food? Well, it only cost you a trip to the grocery store…or more likely today a trip to a restaurant….who cares if half of it goes uneaten? Tossed out? It’s just a plate of food….and no one thinks about the millions of tons of wasted food. I can promise you that most of the people at the Fiesta through nothing away. Not only were they simply glad to have the meal, I believe there was this deep appreciation of the true cost of the meal.
I know most of us are not going to start growing all of our food. We aren’t planning to keep a chicken coop in order to gather our own eggs or butcher the animal to have chicken breasts in a meal that night. But you can become someone who gains at least a little reconnection to the land. You can do some little things: purchase a tomato plant or a hanging basket of flowers. For dinner, actually make it. Go buy ingredients, especially from a local farmers market. Talk to the farmer asking about how the item was prepared. Mow your own grass. Wash your own car.
This won’t be easy. It IS easier to simply go out to eat. It is easier to buy a pill for weight control. It is easier to try to buy a degree online. This is a battle fought in the mind, and it is a battle we must win. Perhaps there is no going back for us as a culture to a time when everything you wanted took time to grow or make, but at the very least, you can become one of the few who understands the value of the effort demanded for every action.
I think the future of our culture depends on it.