Reflections on grapefruit

On a recent trip we ate some fruit over breakfast with some friends. Eating a grapefruit is how I want to live life. To successfully eat grapefruit you have to slice it in two – then use a special knife to dissect it after which you lift the flesh out and eat. After you’ve depleted the fleshy part of the meat, you squeeze the fruit to get the juice out. Our hostess then collected the empty fruit shells, cut it up and used it in other dishes she prepared! I want to live life like that.

On our toad trip this week I reflected on my gusto for eating grapefruit. It is so easy to skip through life and never extract the beauty of now. Our trip this week has been to California and Washington State, while we were in California I found myself thinking ‘We will be in Washington next, I’m really looking forward to it’. These thoughts are not wrong but if it becomes the modus operandi of my though-life then I will never be ‘in’ the moment rendering me harmless.

Imagine thinking you can drink the grapefruit juice without slicing the fruit in two – it will be an exercise in futility! Some of you are already thinking of ways to get the juice without slicing like – inserting a straw etc… That’s what I mean. I want to be where I am. Jean-Pierre De Caussade called it ‘the sacrament of the present moment’