No Impact Man Essay
Family dinner is a special time when every family member stops what they are doing to spend quality time with one another. It is a time when we would catch up with each other and find out what everyone did during the day. We all had such busy schedules that the time spent together during dinner was one of the few times throughout the day that we were all able to be together as a family. There is nothing that can substitute for quality family time and that has been one of the biggest things that I have noticed since I started college.
Time spent at dinner, no matter how miniscule it felt at the time, was one of the most significant events in my daily routine while I lived at home. College life has entirely changed the way that I eat. The most significant difference, personally, has been dinner time. Family dinner back home was more than just a meal that we sat down to share. Over the past few years our dinner has become more of a tradition that it has ever been in our family. Growing up, we didn’t have many sit down dinners together. My mom would usually make dinner for me and my sibling while my parents would eat later on after we were all taken care of.
About five years ago, my mom started emphasizing that we eat as a family and use that as time to bond a little more since we were all so bust during the day. I thought it was a silly idea at first but after a few weeks I recognized how truly valuable that time together was. Over the last two years, we had some pretty serious family issues that tore us apart but through all of it my mom still tried to use dinner as a time for us to stay together and connected. This was a rough period for everyone in our family and it really broke us down.
Both of my brothers stopped wanting to spend time with everyone at dinner but with a little persuasion that changed. Dinner was the glue that my mom used to keep us together as a family. Even though everything isn’t cleared up, I still feel like our family dinner time is one of the few things that kept us from totally breaking apart. In Colin Beavan’s, No Impact Man, his family wasn’t under the same circumstances but it definitely brought them closer as a family. Early in the novel Beavan is faced with undeniable cravings for takeout foods, partially due to their convenience.
However, He realizes how much waste he’s creating and makes the switch to unprocessed foods that reduce the waste he contributes. Throughout his project, I noticed that he and his family spent a lot more time together. This clearly helped to strengthen his relationship with his wife and daughter. For him, the entire project made him and his family more tightly knit, but for me, dinner was just a way to stay connected with my family. Staying connected to my family since starting college has become more difficult than when I was living at home.
There are no more family dinners, no more meaningful conversations, no more quality time with the people that I have lived my entire life with. Dinner at college has been nothing like the quality time I spent with my family. Usually, I find myself eating dinner with people I hardly know, talking about things that are meaningless. College life has changed my overall perspective on the importance of family dinner. College has made me realize that there’s more to dinner than just eating food. Family dinner at my house was a time for me to unwind and talk to my family about their day.
The time I spent at dinner, looking back now, was some of the most meaningful time I spent with my family. I learned about how my brothers and sister were doing in school, how their sports were going and how their everyday lives were going. I learned so much during family dinner and know I only hear how everything is going when I call home on the weekends when I have time. In No Impact Man, Beavan has to explain to his mother as to why he won’t be making separate trips to their house for Thanksgiving and other vacations.
His mother gets upset because he won’t be spending as much time with them throughout the holiday season. This relates to my life because I won’t be able to spend any quality time with my family until the holiday season. Dinner on a college campus is very different from the way I use to eat when we had family dinners at the end of each day. We would start dinner with a prayer as a family then proceed to converse with one another over the next half hour until everyone finished their food. There was never any rush during dinner at our house, which was the one of the only times that everything really slowed down at our house.
All throughout the day, things are pretty hectic but as soon as it’s dinner time, we all take an hour out of our day to stop and catch up with each other. Having that extra time to slow down during dinner was a big help for me in my personal life. It slowed things down just enough for me to look back on my day and reflect. I’ve noticed that dinner at college isn’t quite the same as at home, I rarely slow down my day to relax. It’s usually a buffet so I grab what I can and rush through it so I can go get on with what I was doing before. Most of the time I head down to the cafeteria with my friends to grab something to eat, hen we all finish at different times and go our separate ways without any really deep or meaningful conversations. Dinners at my house have led to some of the most meaningful conversations with my parents. It’s one of the few times that I can feel like I can talk to my parents about anything without having to hold back. College has changed the way I look at the meal we eat every day; I realize it’s a totally different lifestyle that I have to adjust to. College life is so different from any other situation so there’s no way to know how different people will react to the way of life here.
Situations arise that you have never had to deal with before and improvising on the go is just part of growing up and developing that skill set. There is no substitute for real world experience and college life is just another situation that will test people to their limits. The way we treat our bodies through exercise and what we eat is just another test we face in college and our response to this situation is going to be far different than the way we lived at home. I have to make healthy choices now, without anyone else helping or guiding me to the right way.
