The contemplative practice that I found to be most inspiring was the one about cocoa beans and chocolate. In this practice, we thought about where the beans come from and the process that is used to get the beans to facilities to make the sweet snack that we consume often. Thinking about the work it takes to get to grow the bean, it made it even more interesting that most of those people have never actually tried chocolate before. So, this got me thinking more about the processes of bean to facility to bar to store and helped to give me more respect for where our foods come from. The idea many people who grow and harvest the ingredients for our everyday foods never even tries these foods is amazing. What that says to me is that the need for economic function and use is above the actual product. The function of the product becomes more important than what the object is, it is a sort of utility and it makes me wonder how much is lost in the process that it goes through. Do we lose the individual value of the bean in the process? I would argue that most people who eat chocolate give little thought to where it came from. It is something that seems so small to us, but is an entire livelihood for someone else. Being able to attach that much value to an object makes it important and better understood where it comes from. When we don’t necessarily think about the process, we only see what it brings, which can make us lose sight of what the impact on the earth is and what it takes to keep it sustained.
