“Hunger is the best sauce in the world.“
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
Back in college, I went on a community service trip for spring break. The trip was focused on learning about America’s National Parks in the DC area, and one of the days involved working on an organic farm funded by the National Park Service.
Our group was tasked with helping the farm’s employees spread bags of mulch around one of the plots. As we stumbled around trying to pretend like we’d done real manual labor before, I felt like we were slowing the employees down more than helping them—one of those classic “volunteer” situations. Still, the employees seemed excited to have some new faces to talk to and, by midafternoon, we finished the first section and decided to take a well-deserved break.
Exhausted and sore, the group gathered under a large tree to escape the sun, which had been beating down on us all day. One of the employees handed us water in small paper cups. As I desperately grabbed a cup to take my first sip, he reached out and blocked my arm.
“Hang on, man. Close your eyes. That water is about to be the best thing you ever had.”
I’ll be damned. He was right.
There was nothing special about the water. In fact, it was so cold, I couldn’t really taste anything. But sitting under that tree, all sweaty and sore, it felt like I was drinking the elixir of life.
“See?” he said. “Everything is better when you’ve been working outside all day.”
I think back to that moment in my life a lot. Modern life in America has thankfully removed many inconveniences of the past. Most of us have air conditioning, all the food we can eat, and jobs that don’t require hours of back-breaking labor. Yet, while modern life has removed so many negatives from our lives, it may have unintentionally deprived us of life’s simplest pleasures.
When’s the last time you were so physically tired that you melted into your bed and passed out immediately? Or when were you so hungry that normal fruits or vegetables tasted amazing?
Almost paradoxically, we’ve had to compensate for our lack of hardship. There’s an entire cottage industry around medicines and products that will help us sleep—over nine million Americans take daily sleeping pills. But maybe the real reason we can’t sleep is because we aren’t doing anything in our lives that makes us physically tired. Or think of the way we talk about food—we dive into every spice and flavor and how they complement each other to decide whether a meal was truly delicious. But maybe all those spices and flavors feel necessary because we aren’t really that hungry when we sit down to eat.
Encouraged by a coworker, I recently started fasting a few days a week. According to the rules of the fast, I only eat between 12pm and 8pm every day, which means I go for 16 hours straight without food. Especially in the beginning, the fast itself was challenging. I noticed during the last hour of my fast, from 11am to 12pm, it feels like the clock suddenly moves at half speed, agonizingly delaying the moment I finally get a bite of the apple waiting for me as a snack. But when I do finally get to eat my apple, which is normally a standard snack I don’t think too much about, it tastes like it’s the best food on Earth.
I don’t think we need to shun air conditioning, go on crazy daily fasts, or switch to jobs that require intense physical labor to be happy. But maybe not making everything as convenient as possible all the time in our lives isn’t the worst idea. And yes, that probably sounds obvious. But have you ever intentionally tried to deprive yourself of something so that you appreciated the things in your life more?
The next time your friend asks to help them move, instead of coming up with an excuse so you don’t have to lift heavy boxes, think of the amazingly sound sleep you’re going to get that night from being so exhausted. Instead of immediately turning on the TV when you get home, try going a week without it. I’m sure the next week you’ll genuinely look forward to the show you usually just instinctively put on. Heck, you might even find that you enjoyed moving the boxes or found other, more meaningful, hobbies to fill your time in place of the TV shows.
It sounds strange, but maybe to get the most out of life, we need to make it less convenient. And by intentionally trying to find joy in life’s little pleasures, think how much better your day could be. Maybe hunger is the best sauce.
