Essay: The Science of Living Well

Week 1 Growth Challenge
The Science of Living Well
Firstly, I would like be more conscientious of how my daily food is sourced. I have been vegan for over a year now, and, especially after I graduate from college, I hope to obtain most of my food from farmers’ markets or from local vendors. At this time, I am on a meal plan, which I thoroughly relish, but it’s likely that I will not have a meal plan after college. In addition, I would like to purchase clothing exclusively from companies that prioritize the health of the people who make the clothes, and of the environment. I also hope to do Vinyasa yoga close to every day. I recently took a rather spontaneous solo trip to Italy to see the art which I learned about in Art Hum, in real life. It was absolutely invigorating! I hope to incorporate more spontaneous travel into my life, with a goal of traveling to at least five different countries per year and visiting art museums wherever I go.
I would like to make note of and honor my initial emotional to this challenge. After reading this exercise, I questioned the utility of comparing oneself to some ‘optimal’ standard, even if that standard is self-constructed. In some ways, it’s hard for me not to see a parallel between the ethos of the beauty industry and the demands of this specific exercise. I am committed to self-improvement, but I don’t think that pondering an idealized version of oneself, as one would dream about their ideal house or car, is the approach that works best for me. In fact, I think this exercise could cause someone to feel unnecessarily deficient. I’m not quite sure it’s possible to know what one’s optimal version of self is proactively, ahead of time. There are aspects of myself that have changed since I started college, which, three and a half years ago, I most definitely could not have identified as aspects that needed be changed. I do not intend to consciously involve other people in my pursuit of an optimal self, because, in my view, that would require viewing people in instrumental terms.
Week 2 Growth Challenge
I decided to treat myself to a vegan chocolate chip cookie from the Joe coffee shop in Pullitzer Hall after my Jazz class. For me, the opportunity to indulge in sweet treats, as a vegan, is not always as accessible as it was when I was a non-vegan. Last semester, I tried this chocolate chip cookie for the first time, and I was quite dazzled. There are small flakes of sea salt on top of the subtly sweet cookie, as well as large, planar chunks of chocolate, distributed through the whole depth of the entire depth of the cookie. When I arrived at Joe after a very frigid dash from the International Affairs Building, I was greeted by quite a long line. When I finally got my cookie, after a wait of about five minutes, I started nibbling on it immediately, as I walked in the cold back to my residence hall. As I entered my residence hall, I realized that the cookie was nearly gone, and I hadn’t been able to relish the experience of eating it because I was too chilly while walking outside.
For the second part of this challenge, I decided to buy a sweet treat from the vending machine in the lobby of my residence hall, then walk away from the vending machine without taking out the treat. This seemed roughly analogous to me treating myself to a cookie, but instead of me enjoying the little treat, someone else would. When I walked up to the snack vending machine in the lobby, no one else was around. I quickly swiped my debit card and made selection: Welch’s Mixed Fruit fruit snacks. As soon as I saw that the item was being vended, I started to walk away, and a young man who was then passing by said, “Something is falling out of the vending machine!” I told him that I bought the snack so that someone else could find and enjoy it, and I mentioned that it was an activity for the class. He seemed slightly confused, and then mumbled “Oh, that’s nice.” As I walked toward the elevators, I could hear someone pushing on the flap of the vending machine; I’m guessing that the person I had just talked to was getting the fruit snacks from the machine. I have realized that in both of these moments, I criticized myself: with the chocolate chip cookie, for eating most of it in the freezing cold, and with the fruit snacks, for telling the passerby that my gesture for a class. Neither of these moments were particularly joyous for me, but both helped elucidate something. These moments were positive ones, but my experience of them were not free from some tension, because of the self-criticism that both of them evoked.