Tuesday, July 01, 2008

The Art of Eating

Recently I was watching a Taiwanese drama, and I was intrigued by a very simple statement made by one of the main casts. She was having a conversation with another, asking him if he has any happy memories of the past? She gave a passing statement how good memories were associated with food. For a while I thought, was she trying to do an advertisment for Taiwan to draw people to their country with the offer of good food? I felt it was a passing statement with no basis at all. However, it seems to have some truth in it as I pondered a little, as many a times we remembered places we have been to by the kind of food we had there.

Yet, that statement just lingered at the back of my mind. Only yesterday, it jumped out of nowhere when I was having a quiet lunch by myself. I suddenly recalled a bible verse, a statement that our Shepherd had said before He headed to the cross. While He was breaking the bread and passing the wine, and instituted the Holy Communion, He said as often as we take the bread and drink the cup, do that in remembrance (in memory) of Him. Didn't Jesus say something of the same effect here? Perhaps food really has the ability to remind us of a certain memory after all. If the bible says so, it is definitely so.

And as I pondered further, I began to ask why then eating and drinking evokes certain memory? Perhaps it is this... Most of the time, we only engage our sight and hearing in most activities of our daily lives. Perhaps it is only when we are eating and drinking, we are actually engaging 2 other additional senses on top of hearing and sight, our taste and smell, it then dawns on me to realise that the one act of eating and drinking engages the most senses in any activities we do daily. Plus wine does have a sweet fragrance that engages our nose, and bread our taste bud.

Moreover, if we are to notice, it is many a times our sense of hearing and seeing that cause us worries and fears, especially through what we hear and see around us. Perhaps we are so dense that our Shepherd uses our two less use senses which are tasting and smelling to overcome our weakness due to what we see and hear daily... perhaps, just a thought. Isn't this amazing? Just a thought... The beauty of eating and drinking.