From time to time, we may constantly review and ask ourselves why do we live such life everyday. What elements can be assembled into us? I believe that it is natural for all of us to wonder how we should live when we are at a turning point in every phase of our lives in order to find happiness in the form we have dreamed of. The next step is the question of how to find balance between body and mind and continue to have faith in life for a long time.
In this article, we would like to invite the readers to share the story of your life with us. This writing is a process that we may not compile into a standard writing pattern. But will try to connect the dot for all of you.
How did you grow up?
I myself grew up in a family where my mother was a nursing teacher and my father graduated from public health, but later graduated and taught statistics and supervised the evaluation of 80's studies. What makes us very clear is that my father is systematic, organized, serious, but likes to dance (secretly in front of us) and mother is an optimistically free-minded person is very unorganized and shy. I think this is the no.1 important element.
What part of your upbringing that has shape you till these days?
As for the second element, I grew up in touch with health care from the modern medication up to the alternative ones. When I was young, I couldn't relate to whether how this would help people whom treated or advised by my mother.
But overall, I never resist against any medical systems, and my father is always ready to support everything from washing cars to collecting information in public health parks together, or even waiting for mom to do the process of using concentration in the treatment of HIV patients in the village. I had involved in these kinds of activities since childhood from sitting, waiting, listening and participating in the process. I grew up like this until I left home to study in Bangkok.
The third key element is that I grew up in the kitchen, cooking with my parents, my aunt and grandmothers consistently, from washing, pounding, cutting, stir-frying, and that made me a person who loves to eat so much that even if eating breakfast, my mind is already off to think about what to eat for lunch and dinner.
With a career as a community architect, like many people, I work very hard and often violate the physical and mental limits. I did not have an understanding of how we should respect ourselves, both physically, mentally, and spiritually. I only used my body and mind to take care of others and society a lot more, because I feel that social problems are always bigger and more urgent. But I was wrong at some point.
As time goes by, we are all older. That’s the truth. The body became ill with chronic disease and the burnout mentality. Since starting my own office for the second year, my life was full of stress, lacked of sleep, with all unattended care and food. I barely talked to my friends. All these things made me feel weaker and ran out of passion to do things that I love. It slowly ate up my soul unconsciously.
It came to the point that one day I was so discouraged that I just wanted to stop breathing. I could not recall or reconstruct any power within me anymore. But I was fortunate enough that I still had faith and some belief left in my life, so I gathered and snapped myself out of this despair and reviewed what happened to me. I gathered myself from the broken pieces again. And that made me a person with this life choice that I have these days.
I am back to self-catering mode where I get to cook with my parents, my aunt, and grandmothers again with 95% of the ingredients in life that I know the original sources of ingredients. The peace of mind here allows me to cook in a comfortable state without having to be in a hurry. It enables me to think and work with the various senses that I have in cooking. And then I began to have a small herb garden in the house, the basic herbs that can be used in cooking constantly.
Today it is proven that If I want to come back to life again so that I can work on what I am passionate about, the understanding that I must keep with myself is to eat with conscious. If you ask yourself every time what foods you eat are good for yourself and equally good for things around you, the word "balance" is the answer to this matter.
And eating is not the only thing that can make us better but it is the combination of cooking and practices that are respectful to oneself and nature, which will bring us power of life again.
Lastly, the thing that designers(architects) should be most aware of is the design of quality of life from having good food to be an energy source in order to create and do good things for the world. But it would be impossible if we have not started putting efforts and managed to get those good energy from safe food sources. Isn’t it true?
Author
Kasama Yamtree
Community Architect