The use of contemplative practices in a class that focuses on a subject so expansive and with so many interlocking parts that is the global food system at first seemed to me to be a waste of time. To some extent I’m still not convinced by it, but the exercise we did with the raisin was at least an interesting and helped me think about the industrial food system in a more personal way. As I sat in the classroom salivating over a food I don’t even particularly enjoy much, I began thinking about how strange the way saliva works and how the raisin felt on my tongue. As I explored the ridges and grooves of the raisin, I began to think of how complex even just a little raisin is. This lead me to think about how complex the system through which it’s ended up in my mouth is, which is usually the sort of head-spinning thoughts I get when I try and comprehend such topics in this class through systems theory.
However, as I began to focus more on how just how I felt in that moment, I began to think about how it would feel to actually be the farmer harvesting this raisin. The sweat on my back, the sun above me, how it would feel to watch row after row of land by sucked into a metal machine, trying to imagine how much each row will yield me. I began thinking about what it would be like to make a living selling raisins, the stress all the many variable factors in the industry, volatile prices, weather, markets, etc. And through all this I came right back to the little raisin in my mouth, and all its complex grooves and ridges.
While this experience may not help me writing an essay or taking a test, it opened my perspective, humanized a faceless entity that supplies me with something I can’t live without, and grew my empathy for the struggles of farmers worldwide. Perhaps contemplative practices aren’t my favorite method of learning, but I certainly view its worth in a much more positive light than I did at the beginning of the quarter.