Watch The Story of Stuff. It is a short film you can play on your computer along with 12 million other viewers. It might not be new news to you, but its black and white graphics depict a story of our times, our consumption culture, in a way that is at least entertaining if not clarifying. Shortly after watching the film I spent some time with a Seven Stones colleague and friend, health coach Heidi Duskey, and she explained some of the learning she offers her clients: “When we swallow our food, it is gone to us. But it is at that moment that our bodies begin to use it, to interact with it. We must recognize this. Food is our medicine, unless it is our poison.” I responded: “That makes so much sense. We live in a disposable culture. So everything is disposable, even our food. It’s gone to us, just like our trash, just like our relationships. We aren’t in real relationship with it. It doesn’t exist to nourish us.”

This got me thinking about the crisis we are facing as a global community – environmental, political, economic, social, wars, abject poverty – and that to be in relationship with how things are – to become global citizens – we’ve got to feel good enough in our bodies to feel the impact of what is happening around us and in us, to think and to act. 2/3 of people are overweight in the US in at least some part because we do not notice how food interacts with any part of us other than our mouth (which is a delightful and important part!), that and our sedentary life styles among other factors as you are probably aware. Being overweight is a top risk factor for some pretty uncomfortable conditions and diseases that are considered preventable by life style.

If we are so focused on buying stuff (largely because we are told we are inadequate by the 3,000 ads we are exposed to every day) and eating food that causes us to be sick (we might not even be able to tell how food impacts us because who’s taught us how to know that?), how are we going to feel, think and act? How are we going to respond to the crisis of our times?

Taking care of our bodies – what we eat, how we move, how we nourish our whole bodies and being willing to receive the support we need to do this – is an act of personal leadership. It is a declaration that we are enough, that our physical thriving is worth it for the sake of our citizenship. That we are not disposable. This is one of the ways we can take back our citizenship and begin to disengage in the culture of consumption.

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