November 2019: Feeding San Diego

It’s Sunday, which means doing two things most of us loathe - grocery shopping and cleaning out the fridge. I go through the shelves and drawers, sifting through all the good food I want to keep and tossing the rest into the trash can without a second thought.

I fill up the trash with all of the food I didn’t eat and make room for more. I tie up the trash bag and walk out the front door, where I stare out at the park across the street. I see humans who are hungry and homeless pitched up at various picnic tables. In another life they’d be a group of friends having a picnic at the park, with sandwiches and slices of watermelon, and all kinds of snacks. But that’s another life.

In this life, the table is bare. I can’t hear them from where I’m at, but I’m sure their stomachs are growling. The conversation is sparse. They can’t enjoy life when they don’t even have food to keep them alive.

I pause for a second. A pang of guilt runs through me, followed by a wave of sadness.

But then I keep moving. I take all of the food I didn’t eat, that I let go to waste, and I hum my way to the trash bin outside of my house. I throw it in, close the lid, and go on my way. I fill up my fridge with all the amazing food I just got at the store and think about what I’m going to make for dinner.

Does this sound like you?

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There are two kinds of hunger in this life - the kind that keeps you alive and the kind that reminds you of why you're living. If you’re satiating the first kind of hunger, congrats, you’re alive…which means you’re privileged enough to feed what matters.

> What matters is the number of humans who go hungry every day.

> What matters is the amount of food wasted each day.

> What matters is the responsibility we have to end the cycle.

Humans are hungry. We’re hungry for food and we’re hungry to do more good in this world. If we want to make the world a better place, we’ve got to do our part to make sure all humans have their basic needs met so they can first feed their bodies and then feed their souls.

#feedwhatmatters