If you want to know who you are, carefully study yourself inside and out. Study whom you spend time with, what you enjoy doing, what kind of influence you bring onto others, and what your priorities in life are. This will lead you to discover your true-self. – Beopjeong Seunim (1932-2010, a Korean monk respected for his lifetime practice of non-possession)

Yesterday, I met with an employee of the Cultural Corps of Korean Buddhism over tea at the Temple Food Center in Seoul. She attended the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Bra, Italy, where I hope to do my Master degree next fall. The conversation revolved around intersections of food values between the Italian-born food ideology Slow Food, and the centuries-old Buddhist approach to eating named Temple Food. We discussed the global popularization of the Temple Food ideology thanks to Chef’s Table, and how the celebrity of Jeong Kwan has brought with it blessings as well as hurdles.

What I took away from this conversation and the ones I’ve had with other travelers on this trip revolves around building a world-wide community through a common passion. In this case, it’s food.

Slow Food and Temple Food were born in distant cultures, in different centuries, but carry the same vision of spiritual, social, and physical fulfilment through food.

I believe collective consciousness can be revealed when people share presence through food, no matter where they are from.

More to come!..

I want to feel most alive. I dream of far-away places , but these pictures in my mind are only vessels for emotion.

In less than two weeks, I board a plane, alone, for Seoul. All of the emotion, lack of emotion, and tumbling of events that led to the decision to go there don’t matter anymore. I’ve quit my idea of the “why” of this trip, and am going with a new goal:

I want to experience emotion.

Love: to fall into it, out of it.

Fear: to feel uncomfortable, and then face it, trudge through it.

Hunger: to want something, more than anything.

Bliss: the feeling at the summit.

I will tap into my 18-year-old vagabond frame of mind and experience this adventure in a way I’ve never experienced before. I need this.

Do you?

About five years ago, my boyfriend at the time told me a quote from Jim Rohn:

You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

At the time I was 16 years old, and I was hanging out with some people who were not allowing me to pursue my best self. My boyfriend saw them as stifling my potential and he was right. I made the challenging move to change my environment, and therefore my future.

I’ve made this same move in a few very big ways throughout my life.

The day after I turned 18, I boarded a plane with a one-way ticket from Madison, Wisconsin to Seattle, Washington. Unfortunately, I grew up in a toxic family, and as soon as I knew I could physically escape the grips of my psychologically and emotionally abusive relationship with a family member, I took the opportunity. I decided to not apply for University, and I spent time in Seattle and Canada escaping a person who negatively impacted my life in a big way.

Since then, I’ve attended UW Madison, transferred to Northwestern, and took every chance I could to travel somewhere new, usually alone, to take time to collect and reevaluate who I am, and who I surround myself with.

Now, I realize who a person becomes is more than who they surround themselves with; it’s what they surround themselves with.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about consumption. I’ve also been thinking a lot about who I am, where I want to be, and how to change my pattern of consumption to get there. If you can change the 5 people you spend most of your time with, you can change the things that take up the most space in your mind through changing what you decide to consume.

What social media platforms you consume regularly? What types of podcasts and Netflix shows do you watch? What news media do you watch or read?

What food do you consume?

We have the autonomy to decide what we consume consciously.

We have the autonomy to decide who we become, consciously.