Find a Human Pace Between Fast Bites and Slow Meals
I devour lunch in twelve minutes while planning dinner’s elaborate three-hour preparation. The same person who inhales breakfast while running to catch the bus will spend entire afternoons slow-cooking dal to perfect consistency.
We eat fast when life demands speed, eat slow when life permits ceremony. But the contradiction reveals something deeper: how we use food to negotiate the impossible pace of modern existence.
Fast eating is survival strategy. When time becomes scarce resource, meals become fuel stops rather than experiences. We optimize for efficiency, treating sustenance like software update—necessary interruption to be minimized.
But slow eating is resistance strategy. In world that demands constant acceleration, deliberate consumption becomes meditation, political act of refusing to compress everything into productivity units.
The tragedy: we never learned to match eating pace with living pace. Instead, we oscillate between extremes—gulping meals during hectic periods, over-indulging during calm ones, never finding sustainable rhythm.
Maybe wisdom isn’t choosing fast or slow, but learning to eat consciously regardless of speed. Present attention during rushed breakfast. Gratitude during leisurely dinner. Awareness that nourishment happens not in duration but in intention.
The rhythm we seek isn’t about food—it’s about finding pace of being that serves both survival and soul.
