adminI’m not afraid of being dead. It’s not that I want to die or that I’m scared of death. But since I don’t believe in reincarnation or a magical place above the clouds, being dead is just an empty space to me. Blank. Nothing.
For me, my biggest fears are solely linked to being alive. Because, let’s be honest, life is already scary on its own. If you zoom out on all of humanity’s history, there’s probably no better time to be alive than right now. We don’t live in the mud; we have toilets, clean water, and plenty of food.
The food part is what’s actually one, if not the, biggest fear I have. You see, I love food. I love to go grocery shopping, I love to watch cooking videos, I love to read about ingrediënts and food culture. And, of course, I love to eat. My motto is: if I can have one nice meal a day, I have a good day.
But what if there comes a day that I can’t eat well? I’m not talking about being able to eat whatever I want. Nowadays, we can go to the supermarket and find strawberries in winter and tropical bananas all year round. If I had limited choice, but enough, I would still be creative. Thai, Italian, and even Dutch food can be great with only a few ingredients. The fear is that there’s no food at all.
In the Netherlands, we are taught at school about the “Hunger Winter (hongerwinter)”. People had so little food that they started eating tulip bulbs. Maybe they had only 400 to 800 calories available, whereas a grown-up man needs 2500 calories or so.
The idea of being hungry for weeks or months makes my full belly turn upside down. I’m sure some sort of survival mechanism kicks in. However, I think about food maybe 25% of my day, so being starved for weeks will not be easy for me. From time to time, I think about the possibility of a food shortage. And that makes me also realise and appreciate the time we live in. Food is what keeps us alive. Good food is what keeps us together, with a smile.