The grapefruit I was taught to eat when I was young required a knife to cut it in half and a spoon with sharpened ridges to tear out each bite by itself. The risk was the citric acid shot up into the eyes, once or twice each time. I've now discovered it doesn't need as much effort as I was taught to give it. Now I eat it like an orange, now not needing a plate or knife or spoon. Somehow I've discovered the easier path that no one taught me, and now I'd like to learn why I was taught the method that requires so much work. Was that to slow the moment, to stop and make each bite as important and as earned as the last? Was that to add a ceremony to something as simple as eating fruit? Was that to sell more knives and spoons?
It was hands that made the plate and made the knife and made the spoon, so why would we not skip these steps and use our hands to eat the fruit that's already ready to be eaten in the same way we have chosen to eat so many other things.
How many things have I been taught to eat in the wrong way? To do in the wrong way? What am I doing now that takes more time and work and energy than the simple path I could be taking? What am I holding on to now that's hurting me? What am I holding on to now that at some point was worth having but now is not as valuable as I had once thought it to be?
I would rather eat a grapefruit with my hands, like Adam, who never used a knife or fork or spoon or plate or train or car or pen. But yes, I can't or wouldn't want to be that simple. These words couldn't get here without all our advancements, our knives and pens and printing presses and internet and sawmills and existentialism. So some things are still needed, or wanted, at least by me. But not everything we need, and somethings we hold on to needlessly.
I'd like to know what is worth having. I'd like to know what isn't. And maybe then I'd be set free from everything that's keeping me from being so simple as to eat a grapefruit happily and have that be the deepest part of my deepest day.
