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Monday, September 23, 2013

Live Below the Line Day 1: Hunger

I woke up this morning wondering if I am going to feel hungry today. That is not my usual first thought! Every day I click on The Hunger Site to contribute (by my click) to food for the hungry. It has become a routine (and often mindless) part of my "open the computer, check emails" start to the day. Today I paused long enough on the site to scroll around a bit and found this:

"For most of us, hunger is short-term problem with a simple and foreseeable solution: 
easy access to a wide array of food and nutrition choices. 
But for one-eighth of all of the people in the world, 
hunger is a daily, inescapable reality."

Now it is evening - and yes, I did feel hungry most of the day. Sometimes it is the little things that are hardest - I allowed myself one tea bag for the entire day (and no coffee or milk or sugar). We used to joke about sending used tea bags to the missionaries. Actually I have now re-used that tea bag four times! 
Dinner of rice, beans and frozen mixed veg was OK except that we couldn't have any sauce or seasonings. We relented and allowed ourselves some salt - which helped.

So at the end of day one I am humbled by how hard this is and how easily I "allow" little extras like a tea bag or some salt.