Max Daniels

One of my oldest hometown friends came for a visit recently. Of course, I wanted her (who I will call Juannie, since she's on retreat right now and can't make up her own pseudonym) to experience my spiritual home, so we settled in there for some cake and hot chocolate. (Yes, both, even though this is the hot chocolate my yoga teacher says is made from the heart of a neutron star, and he ought to know.) I had the zuger kirsch. I don't remember what Juannie had, but after one or two bites, she said very seriously, Max I'm so sorry I can't talk right now - I have to pay total attention to this cake.

Which she did. While I watched in fascination.

Because I would never have let myself do that in public while significantly overweight, and I still don't do it now. I don't sneak food; as I have written, that's one of my most important guidelines. But to glory in something I was eating, especially something sweet and thus verboten, in public? Never.

It was totally natural for Juannie to pay exquisite, ecstatic attention to what she was eating, and if you are naturally thin, probably for you, too. But for a person who's visibly over the social limit on weight, taboo!

So I suddenly saw that when I have talked about "paying attention," I have not meant exquisite, ecstatic attention; I have meant something more serious, and I'm sorry to say, a little dutiful at times.

But I think glorying in the attention I pay to what I eat would be a very fun way to subvert my personally dominant paradigm of duty.

And I think my Zen teacher has been trying send me just this message for years.