72 - Wild

Into The Wild is the biographical story of Christopher McCandless, a young man who decided to eschew the materialism of the world, he donated all of his money to a charity and disappeared from the societal map, spending two years traveling across the United States until he eventually reached his dream destination of Alaska, where he decided to be a pioneer and live off the land.

As portrayed in the movie, game was scarce and he was getting very hungry. Finally, when the starvation was becoming unbearable, desperation force him to revert to the only food option he had—plants and berries. Working feverishly, he quickly tried to identify the edible species so he could have something to eat. Unfortunately, with his mind so unfocused because of his urgency to find food, he misidentified an edible plant with one that was poisonous. On day 94, his journal indicated that he was starting to feel the adverse effects, and sometime after day 113 he passed away.

Because of Chris' dire situation, he lost the mindfullness that he had exhibited all the prior months. It was that desperation that allowed him to misidentify a plant he needed to survive, bring his life to a tragic end. If he had managed to keep his wits about him, even in such horrible straits, it is quite possible that we would be reading his story first-hand as it topped the bestseller list.

Although our lives are not that harsh in the civilized world we live in, we can still run into situations that bring us to that moment of desperation where we lose focus and the control that we have so carefully crafted and honed.

Case in point:

In preparation for my upcoming trip at the end of this week, I knew today was going to be hectic busy. I made sure to do all of my KFB exercises first thing in the morning so that was done and out of the way. I followed that with my KFB approved breakfast, then I was out the door and traveling about town to hit all of the stores I needed to visit before heading to a friend's house for the evening where a group of us were going to gather to start assembling, fixing, sewing, and whatnot for camping trip.

My friend, being the gracious hostess that she is, made munchies available to everyone, which included bags of chips, cookies, sodas, and pretty much every unhealthy thing that you can think of. Like everyone else, I began to partake of the offerings—eating and eating like the food was going out style. Although somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that this stuff was bad for me, the warnings didn't seem to affect me enough to stop as I continued to grab handfuls of chips. On and on the feeding continued until all that was left were the salty crumbs shifting around the bottom of the bag. It was shortly after then that my body paused enough so the voice from my brain to come through, allowing me to ponder upon what had just occurred.

I had been very busy all day, running here and there. In all of the time that I was out and about, I never considered that I was missing my lunch and snack times. I was being active, which allowed me to suppress the signals that were coming from my body letting me know that it wanted some food. By the time I had stopped the activity, my body took full advantage to replenish it's energy supply with the nearest available edible option—in this case, all those chips and stuff my friend put out.

Like Chris McCandless, had I not lost the focus and been mindful of my situation, I would have had the cognizance by which to avoid the food that was not good for my body.