Fast for 24 hours
6% complete
Many of my list items connect to a long-term goal or vision I have for my life. Not this one.
I was inspired to fast by my friend Daniel, who has completed several fasts over the years, many of them lasting more than 24 hours. After we spoke about his reasons for fasting, I bought in. While there may or may not be physical health benefits to be gained, the real power of a fast is in proving to yourself that you can do it, and to show that your typical daily routine is not an immutable fact of life.
Fortunately for me, Daniel decided to take part in my fast from afar to support me throughout. It was immensely helpful to know that I wasn’t going through it alone. Daniel’s periodic check-ins helped me push through some tough stretches; they also reminded me how powerful it is to share a life experience with somebody.
Something that has surprised me most about adulthood is the profound isolation that can arise without a careful cultivation of shared experience. Childhood, and even young adulthood, necessitates these shared experiences by forced proximity. Adulthood—with its suburban silos and busy schedules—does no such thing. Much of what I do and experience at this stage of my life—watching movies, listening to music, visiting coffee shops—I do by myself. I’m reminded of a page from Oh, the Places You’ll Go:
Dr. Seuss turned out to be right. Which is a little depressing, in light of another pearl of wisdom from another book that is dear to me, Into the Wild. Dying of starvation, Chris McCandless writes “HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED” in the margin of his copy of Dr. Zhivago. My experience bears this out: when I think back on the happiest memories of my life, there are always other people populating those scenes. Pledging a fraternity, surviving my first year of teaching, getting married, taking a road trip to Omaha—these indelible memories are only potent because I wasn’t alone when I made them. This isn’t to say I haven’t done important, meaningful things while by myself, but the most emotionally powerful moments of my life involve doing life with others.
I didn’t go into the fast with any particular goal or meditation, but now, on the other end of it, maybe this is what I was supposed to learn. That doing things with others is nearly always preferable to going it alone. If a tree falls in my forest of solitude, and nobody is around to hear it, did it make any impact? In the past I would have said sure, it made no impact for others. But I’m coming to see that maybe it makes no impact for myself, either. Or at least a much smaller one. If I want to remember things; if I want them to matter to me; if I want to play a part in a story much bigger than myself—it is crucial that I seek connection.
There’s more I want to say, but the kids are getting up soon. For now, I’m glad to have unearthed this much through writing.
Other notes on the day of fasting:
My fast went from 8pm to 8pm; I’m glad I did it this way, because the first few hours were spent sleeping, when it’s harder to feel hungry anyway.
Cold brew: great for curbing hunger, terrible for exacerbating shakiness.
Thank goodness sparkling water turns out to be OK to drink during fasts.
Originally I thought seeing people would help me take my mind off the hunger, but it turns out that it only made me more aware of how much functionality I (perceived I) had lost. Add this to having to wrangle Jonah, and I felt I was hovering around 40% brain capacity. Apologies to Cass and Cori!
The day turned out to be an unintentional meditation on fatherhood, as I ended up spending every one of the kids’ waking moments with either one or both of them. Usually I get a bit of a break in the middle of the day while they both nap, but the trip to San Diego eliminated that respite for the day. Interactions with everybody from Cori, to another dad at The Coffee Drop, to a disembodied voice in the Temecula library prompted various reflections on parenting, all of them positive and empowering. Potentially more thoughts to come in a future post.
Of course Jonah wanted to stop at Trader Joe’s when I was at my hungriest. Thanks! (At least the kiwis we got were a delicious treat when the fast ended.)
We took another impromptu trip to Baron’s Market near the very end of the fast, where I bought another treat to look forward to: Abe’s Vanilla Cupcakes, which are a miraculous feat of engineering that somehow avoid all of my allergies while managing to be mind-bogglingly delectable.
Another maybe more obvious takeaway from the fast: I can endure a lot more than what I think I can. Making it just one more hour with the fast is representative of many other “just one more _____” in life when things get tough.
One last, maybe less obvious, takeaway: rest helped me make it to the finish line. I am not good at rest. I am go go go; I prefer to be doing something just about every minute of the day. The fast forced me to consider how much energy I was expending, and how it might not be a bad idea to just chill and let things play out without my intervention. Maybe there’s a lesson about parenting in there?
At this point I’m sure I’m rambling, so I’ll cut myself off. Will I fast again? I could go either way, but at this point I’m leaning toward yes, maybe paired with some sort of meditation excursion. We’ll see.
Until next time, fight on.
-K.