By John Dennehy

“None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.” – Henry David Thoreau –

Two years ago I moved to Nicaragua on a whim and decided to, as best I could, live like those around me.  By chance I settled in a small city called Chinandega near the Honduras border.  I rented a small, scorpion infested room in a neighborhood controlled by a local gang and found work at a hotel downtown.  I worked everyday, around 70 hours a week, earning roughly 30 cents an hour – and lived entirely of my third world minimum wage.  The experience was at times unpleasant but in the end, valuable and insightful.

From Nicaragua I went directly to the Pacific Northwest and met my family for a cruise to Alaska.  After coming from Central American poverty I was appalled at the excesses of North American luxury.  Nicaragua is the hemispheres second poorest nation for many reasons, but agriculture is not one of them.  The small nation grows more than enough food to feed all of its people – but much of that food is exported for profit to richer nations while people there starve, while people I lived and worked with starve.  Sailing by glaciers and spectacular mountains I watched everyday as people filled their trays with imported food then threw most of it away.

Then I did it too.

Towards the end of the cruise my eyes were bigger than my stomach and I didn’t finish everything on my plate.  I was what I had admonished.  I felt horrible and stopped eating.  I wanted to, needed to remind myself what hunger felt like.  Ever since then, I fast for a few days at a time every few months for the same reason; to remind myself what hunger feels like.

We shouldn’t fear struggle, we should embrace it.  We shouldn’t avoid it, we should learn from it.  It’s ok to have jelly beans and iPhones and whatever other luxuries we fill our lives with, but it’s important to understand what having nothing feels like.  It’s important to know what others feel and realize how our lives affect theirs.

I am in the process of breaking my longest fast to date: seven days.

Peace. Love. Hope.