I sometimes wonder whether we eat to live or live to eat. It may not be either or, as it could be both too! I eat to live. I believe, I eat food to survive but some may live to eat and it is fine too. Eating to live or living to eat is a personal choice and everyone has a right to live life their way.
I have never enjoyed cooking. I enter the kitchen only when it is inevitable and I have no choice. I do help my spouse when she needs help in cutting vegetables or doing some other chores in the kitchen. But cooking is not my hobby. Sometimes when people ask me what I would like to eat – I would reply – anything and they would be amused. The people who enjoy food want to plan for it and put in a lot of efforts to cook and relish it.
I can spend an entire day with fruits and snacks to survive and not cook anything if I am alone. But for some others, this may be a torture. So, if I have a guest, I need to cook good food for them if they enjoy food and not offer snacks just because I can manage with them.
In my view eating to live or living to eat is a personal preference. I neither believe my philosophy of eating to live is wrong nor someone else enjoying food and living to eat is wrong. However, the problem is when one thinks the other is not ok.
When people want to take you out for dinner to a famous restaurant in a new city and you are not that excited, they feel disappointed. They may be right in feeling unhappy as they are putting in extra efforts to make you happy, but they don’t realise that food is not your priority. On the other hand, if you say no, you are making then unhappy since eating good food, is life for them.
In my view neither eating to live nor living to eat, is right or wrong. What is wrong is our belief that the other person is not enjoying life as we are doing. We tend to typecast people based on our own frames of life. The moment someone does not fit into our frame of life and living, we feel they are wrong.
Our ability to live life on our own terms and letting others live their own way, is a better way to enjoy life. The day we realise that we have a right to live life our way and others their way, we may be right. We also have to learn to respect the opposite of our worldview of life.
It may be easy to say this, easier to write about this but rather difficult to practise it. In life, most things we adore may not be what others do. The day we learn to live life our way and let others do their way , we have arrived.
Life is all about live and let live.
S Ramesh Shankar
15th Oct 2021
Hrishti - S Ramesh Shankar 
Great Read as always Ramesh Sir. Thanks for sharing!
Wisdom is not just in allowing ourselves to live in the truest and most authentic form but also in allowing others to pursue the same.
But when I think deeply about this philosophy, the pressing issue which hinders this approach seems to be this internal dialogue/question – ‘”What would they think of me? How would they judge me ?”
The reason this thinking is flawed is because – the figure “they” is extremely vague, “they” would indeed have more important tasks than just sitting and judging our life always (though a minor amount of people strangely do this!), and “they” shouldn’t actually dictate the way of our living (unless we give them permission to do the same).
It takes conscious living to step out of this loop but it’s definitely worthwhile. Questioning the authenticity of our beliefs and challenging the ones that don’t serve us has helped me tremendously in my life!
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Absolutely
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I am not eating to save my stomach.
Hunger is a medicine. I am healthy and controlled sugar level in the blood.
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