Why Food Matters, 1

This from someone in response to my tweet this morning:

What planet are you on? The one WITHOUT thousands dying from an earthquake? SO FINE?!?!?!

I hadn’t yet read the news when I tweeted this morning – I get up early to write before making breakfast and reading the papers -  but it made me stop and think about whether I would have written something different if I’d known about the horror in Japan. 

Perhaps. But it occurs to me that this is the same planet in which an indifferent world is watching a dictator murder his people, the same planet whose richest country allows one in eight people go to bed hungry every night, the same planet on which women are being genitally mutilated, the same planet on which…..

There is no time, ever, in which a terrible disaster is not taking place somewhere on the planet.  And thanks to modern technology, we know all about it almost immediately. As I see it, we have a moral responsibility to respond to those disasters in the best ways that we can. Write letters, send money, do whatever possible to alleviate pain, end suffering and make the world a more just place.

But in the face of ongoing disaster, it is also our moral responsibility to appreciate what we have.  That is why cooking good food for the people that I love is so important to me; in a world filled with no, it is a big yes.

So eat a good breakfast. Be grateful for what you’ve got. Enjoy the sunshine while you've got it.  Then go out and save the world.