You Aren’t What You Eat
There’s a common saying: “you are what you eat”. It’s a harmless enough saying, right? Loosely we know it’s just scratching a surface, yet in general we nod our heads and think: “yeah, whatever I put in my body is going to have an effect on me, positive or negative.” Usually this phrase is used negatively, like a shake of the finger at a food stuff believed to be unhealthy.
There’s a deeper thread to “you are what you eat”, though, that isn’t worth loosely accepting. It’s a thread that throws out the “you” and says that the food you consume can fully constitute you — that your external environment fully constitutes you. “You” are merely an outcome of the external world.
Some might think I’m mincing words, but the implications of this simple phrase may exemplify our modern thought. Why didn’t we collectively settle on a phrase that instead puts “you” into the primary position? It’s not far off after all — a phrase that instead honors “you” would be: “you eat what you are”. Think about that:
You aren’t what you eat — you eat what you are.
This simple rearrangement of words completely changes the meaning of the phrase, making you primary and the external world secondary. When you eat what you are, the objective world becomes a symbolic reflection of a subjective you. This is much more responsibility than we’re used to dealing with. We’ve instead decided to put the responsibility on food, television, companies, pollution, bad bosses, and microbes. We’re viewed as products of our parents, society, generation, or genes.
Are you ready to take responsibility for your world, or will you continue to let your world take responsibility for you? It’s a change in thinking, and it starts with recognizing the roots of simple daily phrases and thoughts that we take for granted.
