curhatnya • populorum progressio

Hullo, guys.

 

Today I'm gonna share to you a little habit of mine: I always ate something to the very last bit of it.

Siriusly.

You might see this as an odd thing, but really—seeing leftovers in restaurants, or bits of food abandoned and thrown away in the streets—they broke my heart a little bit. You might say that I'm a greedy person or a cheapskate for eating and savoring it to the very last drop, but for me, it’s odd to left your food when it’s not done eaten.

But, Dhik, I’m full, what should I do?

Well, my parents taught me to measure how much I can eat first, before blindingly taking everything to my heart’s desire. That mindset is ingrained in my head since I was a kid. Coming from the in-betweens—the not really wealthy but not poor too?—my family always told me to take it ‘secukupnya’ (English: fairly—a fair amount) so it fits my stomach’s need. Back in the day, they said something that intrigued me:

“The rice will cry if we do not eat them.”

It sounds kinda odd, isn’t it? Rice have no feelings, let alone tear glands.

Many kids in Indonesia are probably taught the same way—at least in my generation, some of we did. Because I generally hate making someone sad, I always tried to eat until my plate is really clean, without any trace of rice—I ate it until the last grain! My friends sometimes laugh at my almost OCD way of eating.

Growing up, I watch the telly, and then see the truths for myself with my very own eyes—I saw the less fortunate people struggling for shred of better life, I saw how steadfast they take it—and then I realized that what I’ve been taught as a kid is true, in it’s quirky way.

Tears dropped, about foods.

According to United Nations Environment Programme’s website, one in every seven people go to bed hungry, and more than 20.000 people die of hunger everyday, worldwide.

THAT’S A LOT OF PEOPLE.

I have 28 classmates at school—imagine them as a crude sample, then, every night four of them go to bed hungry. There are a lot of people all around the world—like, A LOT. Many of them is left hungry, waiting to succumb to malnutrition or something else because they lack of food. Because some irresponsible people wasted tonnes of food that probably can feed 900 million hungry people in the world.

It’s not the rice, or the other form of food, that cry, it’s the people that longing for them that dropped tears.

And did you know that wasted food contributes their own share in global warming? People condone industrial wastes for destroying the environment, but leftovers that rotting in landfills emits methane—one of the most dangerous GHG the Earth faces.

Eat smartly might take baby steps to do—with people’s habit and different lifestyles we lived, but every scrap of food we waste, someone in the other side of the world might be dying to have that. So count your blessings and share them.

Eat. Wisely.

Toodles!

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Title's translation: The Development of People; an encyclical written by Pope Paul VI.