Milk Comes from Cows, not Cartons

Sorry it’s been a while since I’ve blogged. Sometimes life kicks you in the ass and makes it hard to do the things we like to do. We go at 90 miles an hour, acting and reacting on autopilot. This week, I’ve been meditating on slowing down.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about counting blessings. I'm not referring to blessings in a religious sense necessarily, although for some to count blessings mean using the ritual of prayer. This post has to do with consciously realizing and considering where our food, clothing, housing materials, etc. come from.

People work daily to make my life easier. From trash collection, to mail distribution, to water purification, there are billions of hours dedicated to me and I’m not even aware of it most of the time.

When I sit down to eat, do I ever think about where my food came from? There was a family in the market the other day and the little girl was complaining that she was starving! Her mother responded “Look around you! You’re in a GROCERY STORE! You’re not even close to starving”

Bravo Mama!

We have so many conveniences, so much at the tips of our fingers and with the whirlwind of our lives, we forget to think about how it comes to be.

We forget to remember the back-breaking work, the ridiculously early start to a ridiculously long day the farmer has. Besides the harvest, he has the planting, sowing, and cultivating. All so we can have fresh fruits and vegetables on our tables. Or milk to drink. Yeah, milk comes from cows, not cartons. Sometimes a machine helps, but still a cow was involved. There’s only one way to get it out of the cow.

We forget that an animal gave his life for us to eat it. Sure it might have been his destiny, but still, it was a life.

I planted the trees in my yard and have watched them grow over the past 16 years. I didn’t have to do very much other than trim them a bit if their branches got unruly. It was totally the tree and Mother Nature doing all the work. When I open a box of crackers or chips, I rarely think about the tree that was grown and now is the paper/cardboard holding my snack.

So today when I sit down to eat I’m going to stop for a few seconds and think about what is in front of me. And appreciate it. My aunt always says a prayer of thanks before eating. Now I understand what that’s about. A little thank you to the universe.