Today I’d like to talk about our perception of what is normal.
Let’s start with a strange story.
When I got injured, I was fed by a tube that went through my nose into my stomach. I was given about 30 eggs to help reach 7,000 calories a day and I lost weight on that diet because all the burns needed a lot of energy to rejuvenate, rebuild, and so on. I would have three hours off and then one hour of this mix of eggs and nutrition being fed to me through the tube. And in case you’re wondering, my cholesterol is fine.
About four months after my injury, the doctors let me know they planned to disconnect the tube in a couple of days and that I’d start eating on my own. What do you think my reaction was? You’re probably thinking that I was happy. Well, I was slightly happy because it meant things were moving forward. But I mostly didn’t want it to happen. I asked them if they could keep the tube in. They asked me why. And I explained that I didn’t really want to start eating. The method was very comfortable and very efficient. If I had to start chewing and eating 30 eggs and 7,000 calories per day, it would be really, really tough. And besides, who wants to spend all this time chewing and eating? The point is that after about four months in bed, I had a different view of eating. I wondered why humanity spent so much time on food. What a waste of time. Who wants to chew? Who wants to do all this food preparation? Why are we doing it for such a long time? I assured the doctors that one day they would see my point and that one day, people would stop eating. I didn’t think anybody would walk around with feeding tubes, but I did say, “We’ll have pills, and we’ll just take these pills and not waste our time on this crazy activity called eating.” How barbaric. How primitive.
Anyway, of course, they didn’t listen to me. They took the tube out and I had to start eating. What happened was that I was reminded of the taste of food. I did have to eat way too many eggs and it’s very tough to eat 7,000 calories. But I still remember, for example, the first strawberry I ate after they took the tube out. Wow!
Now, if I’d been asked before they took the tube out if food has taste, I would have answered, yes and it’s good. But if they had asked whether I could imagine it, I wouldn’t have been able to do that. After four months of eating through a tube, the taste of food was kind of erased. So, the joy of food—the taste, flavor, smells—basically went down and the functionality went up, I was focused on efficiency.
Now, why am I telling all of this? Sometimes when I look at life, I think we’ve gotten used to a tube. What are the kind of interactions we have with each other? How did we get to the level of discourse that we have in our politics? I think we’ve kind of gotten used to a certain level of communication, discourse, foul language, aggression, and hate. I don’t know what will bring us back. Because unlike the way that eating my first strawberry after the tube was removed reminded me of the goodness in the experience of eating, a decent human interaction doesn’t suddenly remind us of how good things could and should be enough for us to change. I feel that we have gotten used to this information tube and it is not good for us. And I’m really wondering what experience will get us to remember that this is not how we’re meant to live. To remind us that this is not how we are meant to communicate with each other. It’s not how we are meant to experience the world. What is going to be the equivalent of taking out the tube. Are we going to get to it? I’m not sure.
But for me, the parallel between living in a world where we’ve forgotten a lot of the sources of joy in interacting with people, trusting people, knowing that somebody might tell us a joke, that somebody cares about us that, that we won’t be attacked for everything we say. How do we get there? How do we get there back? I don’t know how, but I know we must find a way because the way we’re living now is with the tube, and it’s not good for us.
