Mindful Eating

ORIGIONAL PUBLISH DATE: April 20, 2010

As I sat in the beautiful sunshine of Scottsdale, AZ this morning, I ate a grapefruit. 

End of story?

I love grapefruit. Every part. I love how it looks, tastes and feels and I am grateful for the way I feel peeling it, eating it, and even digesting it. I hold it, look at it, take it in...

I spend a moment, deeply thankful for the grower of this grapefruit, and then my mind goes down the list of all the people that labored to bring it to my breakfast table- pickers, truck drivers, grocery store workers. 

33 cents is all I paid for this experience. 

My mind turned to the soil that nourished the tree that produced this amazing thing... and then to all the people that had passed over that soil since time began, the ones who had sat there and talked there and danced there, loved there and buried their dead there.... This particular fruit was chosen for its beautiful colors of yellow, orange and even a tiny bit of green from a huge pile of its brothers. 

Peeling it, I noticed the softness to the inner skin, the amazing scent that energizes and awakens me. As a drop of juice fell to the table I realized that it was like reincarnated rain or ocean or I suppose both. Water- elemental and finite, filtered over and over by earth and clouds gathered up into this grapefruit- all for me... Maybe it should be called gratefulfruit.