A World of Change

Written By: Donna Rhodes | Issue: 2019/12 - December

My friend, Blanche, and I were driving home from Zumba, chatting away, chewing and eschewing the virtues of the vegetarian, the Vegan, and the Raptor diets.

Unfamiliar with the Raptor Diet? That’s when you eat anything that moves, tartare’d or char-char’d. It’s the Paleo Diet with a Chinese twist. You probably heard about the Chinese vlogger who tried to eat an octopus . . . live . . .  and it returned the favor. I was rooting for the octo. These days I’ll bet the vlogger finds a carrot a lot more enticing than a tentacle. 

When you think about it, though, the Octo vs. Human encounter is a great idea for a horror movie . . . especially from the cephalopod’s point of view. Imagine a kelp bed waving movie posters featuring Goliath humans attacking helpless squiddles. This time the antagonist is not the Kraken, but the Kracker. 

Okay, I confess. The Raptor Diet isn’t a real thing, but it’s not any stranger than the Bacteria Diet or Dessert-for-Breakfast Diet, both of which are allegedly legit. 

Our random conversation led us to other foodie news-bytes. A recent study revealed Germany has the highest percentage of vegetarians and Vegans in the Western world. We both found that interesting. Our incorrect assumption: a culture with a war-torn history all the way back to Goths and Vandals, would be largely carnivorous, the people wolfing wieners and wursts whenever possible. Granted a lot of Germans are still sausage-a-vores, but they have a lot more veggie-lovers than America does. If fast food had a temple, Americans would stand in line to be junk-food monks and fryers.

When I taught high school I was lucky enough to have foreign exchange students, several of whom were German. 

I told Blanche, “Now that I think of it, without exception, when the classroom conversation drifted toward the World Wars, the German kids couldn’t apologize enough for Germany’s behavior. Several generations hence, Germans still feel the guilt of their nation’s atrocities. It’s evident Germans are dramatically raising their Mindfulness Quotient.”

I got goosebumps. So did Blanche. Silently we ran through accounts of cultures mistreated by our own nation: indigenous tribes, African slaves, many minorities, and so forth. And those stories are not entirely ancient accounts in dusty history books. Abuses are happening today.

We looked at each other and said, “So when do we
start apologizing?” 

  As we enter the holiday season, let us ratchet up our own M.Q. with this quote from The Seven Paths: “The most beautiful thing in the world is a heart that is changing.”  

   Happy holidays, Everyone. Here’s to a world of change.