Why are we refusing to be eaten?

How can we strengthen our role as snacks in the metabolic whole?

Life is metabolic.
The Earth is a metabolism.
Everyone who lives eats,
and everyone who eats lives.

But who is eating us?
Who are we allowing to eat us?

We seem to have no boundaries when it comes to eating others.
We snack on babies of other beings, we wear them, our idea of cosyness is dipping chocolate chip cookies in what was supposed to nourish the babies that we just ate.

Photo by Jennie Razumnaya on Unsplash

Nothing about this is inherently wrong (besides perhaps the cookie thing, which is kinda unhinged). Life isn’t a fairytale. Being eaten is a natural part of life; for mushrooms, strawberries, cows and humans, and that is where a confrontational question arises: Who are we allowing to eat us?

Our faeces are neatly guided to waste management plants instead of returning to the soil. Our “surplus” food and “food waste” end up in landfills and incinerators instead of compost piles. And even after death, we are holding on, cremating our bodies or burying them in preservative coffins instead of feeding the maggots and earthworms.

We have normalised using and eating everyone else.
But we are refusing to be eaten.

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A skewed idea of human exceptionalism is blocking our willingness to be a nourishing flow in Earth’s metabolism. Our ego is prompting us to preserve our bodies, protect our being, even after death has invited us into the next cycle of life. The idea of being cremated or locked away in a coffin has always scared me.

I love eating, and when I die, I want to be eaten, I want my faeces to feed the soil,
I want my existence to nourish beings. Life is metabolic. And I am life.

Laws are a human construct, and in our current backwards society, they are blocking us from fulfilling our role as yummy snacks of the earth’s metabolism. Compost toilets are forbidden in many settings. Natural burials are constrained to small pockets of land. We are being denied the opportunity to participate in a fundamental law of life: to snack and be snacked.

Be food,

feed life.

Be humble,

feed soil.

Be animal,

feed mycelium.

Be human,

feed me.

Be atoms,

feed energy,

Be blood,

feed maggots,

Be water,

feed rivers.

Be you,

be food,

feed life.

Have you ever paused to reflect on your eatability? Who will eat you? How are you being eaten? How are you NOT being eaten? What opportunities do we have to strengthen our eatability? How can we strengthen our role as snacks in the metabolic whole?