I watched a septuagenarian feed his wife this week. It was a private moment in a public setting and I could not convince myself to look away. One fork. That was all he had. He took a bite of his rice and then, fork from mouth to plate again but this time, it went to her. She sat there placidly, content, trusting, childlike. 

My friend Izzy says that it's a beautiful thing to age - that as one becomes older, they return to a more innocent state, needing care from the ones they cared for - feeding, cleaning, dressing. I think it is just precious, she said and I tried to feign a nonchalant ambivalence while inside railing. I don't want to get old. I don't want to be fed. I don't want to be irrelevant.
Izzy tells me this is a hang-up with white people, this insane desire for independence and a disregard for the aged - but not with us Mexicans, she laughs. 

I am choking on some disappointment. Disappointment ingested becomes bitterness, or at least in my case that's what's happened. It's a pang just deep enough that you can't touch the wound and when people ask what's wrong with you? all you know is that its below the surface and there are some things that are just easier to leave on the surface.

Man can not live by bread alone, Jesus said that. Bread alone...He was talking about actual, physical bread but tonight it occurs to me that this bread is anything we are using to nourish ourselves. And guess what? We're leeches. Our primary food source is other people - what they say, think, feel, believe, give. We get what they have. It's a parasitic existence and we love it, or at least that's what we tell ourselves. But man does not live by bread alone, Jesus said, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Fresh, living words. He's not stale, what He brings is new every morning. There is a bounty at my fingertips...why settle for the second-hand? 

Depletion is an emptiness, but its more than just a lack, it's the recognition that resources have been let out and there is simply nothing left...you're dried up. I saw it clearly tonight - I am empty not because He is depleted but because I am trying to live on bread alone and the bread I have chosen will always taste like disappointment.