Finding Fullness

By Rei Chou

As long as I’ve been involved in The Feast, it’s been teaching me. Teaching me about the interconnection of our world. About how our relationship with each other mirrors our relationship with our planet. About how deeply the metaphor of nourishment runs through our work and our pursuit of fullness.

Feasting starts with the land. With how we are physically nourished. But it also affects and is affected by how we find nourishment and connection socially - with each other. In today’s world, we are disconnected - both from the land and each other. And mono-crop and mono-culture go hand in hand. Mono-crop is the result of an individualized, compartmentalized ways of seeing the world that has led to siloed industrialization that only sees and values single output over ecosystems and it’s how most of our food is produced. And this way of growing has stripped our land as much as it has our bodies and souls of nourishment. 

But empty calories = emptiness all around. You see big ag leaves the land depleted of nutrients, but what’s more, eating food depleted of nutrients - the output of this individualist, extraction-based system - kills our digestive biome. Yes, the impact of the system affect our system. What’s more, weak biomes leave us more prone to depression, anxiety among other physical and socio-emotional relational issues. Is it any wonder our culture reflects rising mental health issues and isolation?  

What we eat affects how we connect with each other. And how connected, or disconnected we are from the earth and each other - affects how we grow what we eat. How we find nourishment.

Our disconnected, individualized way of taking from each other, and the earth strips our land and our guts of culture - physically and socially

The micro is the macro. The state of our planet is the state of our gut is the state of our greater social order: And we are starving.

Starving for connectedness, starving for agency and meaning, starving for a community that sees us for who we are, starving to have and be enough. 

What we need is a regenerative approach to living. To reweaving the collective fabric with relationship as the thread. 

It is through systems of trust and mutual support that we can find our way back into relationship with each other and ourselves as part of an interconnected whole - taking and giving back.

Connection is increasingly becoming the currency of our world because as social structures continue to shift, it’s connection that enables resilience, collaboration and response. 

The question is, will we cultivate our connections by choice and in pursuit of a more beautiful world we know is possible, or because of the need that will come from the irreparable consequences of our actions?

What might a more connected way of living look like? I’ll share what we see. 

Imagine you know who you are and have friends supporting you on the life-long journey toward coming home to yourself. That you have elders and advisors to turn to to make sense of the world and your place in it. That you have people there to hold your deepest vulnerabilities and your greatest celebrations.

Imagine you are able to share your gifts as freely as a river - undammed, unafraid, unencumbered by forces external or internal. That you have a community to help you channel the current of your gifts and aliveness toward flourishing, toward beauty, toward that which truly fulfills you.

Imagine seeing the gift in every conflict as an opportunity to grow and having a community to grow with. To share in the bounty of each other’s gifts. 

Imagine investing in each other’s fulfillment as a way of changing the world and creating prosperity and security: socially, ecologically, financially. Imagine living free from the system, but not free of it. Interdependent with it - driving its evolution with every new possibility you bring to light.

Imagine having all that you need - inside and out - to live your purpose and fully serve the world. 

Imagine that you have and that you are, enough, satisfied, full. 

We create and we take nourishment - from the land and from each other - and we create our lives from it. What will you create? 

For us, we choose to turn it into living, breathing, embodied examples of what we want to see in the world; of what we know is possible. For how to live, how to work, and how to play, expand, and create in relationship with this incredible planet. 

We don’t claim to be perfect. We make mistakes. We learn. And we grow along the way. But we have our goals. And we seek to share our learnings with the world so that we might grow a more beautiful garden together. 

At The Feast, we are transitioning from starvation and scarcity to a state of fullness and abundance. One that is replete with social, cultural, and economic richness. 

So that at every moment till the end of our days, we may sit at the table and feast on our lives and be full.