I took a life

I took a life. I watched the energy drain from a living thing until it stopped moving, stopped being and was gone. I am not proud. I don't want to do it again. Before I did it I cried and suggested that we set the creature free, but my boyfriend told me that he was not made of lobster money and that we had to get over our desire to introduce to the wild the lobster that he had chosen from a tank at our local asian market, put him in a pot and steam him for 30 minutes with ginger and baby spring onions.

A chef had suggested that we put the crawling, clawing bottom dweller into a steamer and wait, but we wanted to get it over with quickly, to minimise the pain the creature would feel. The difficulty was that, as we watched our little clawed friend try to lift the stopper on our kitchen sink, I was sorely tempted to give him a name - such a feisty little creature should surely have a name. Only, if you name you dinner, it can be very hard to consume it later. So we decided not to deepen our bond with our crustacean and instead, debated who would put him in the pot.

I must admit that I felt my eyes well up as we discussed how we would cook the lobster, who was then lifting himself up on his claws and scratching around the sink. Eventually, I agreed to be the one to lift our little friend into his last resting place, but when it came to it I couldn't do it and instead held the lid of the pot open, and then closed as the lobster shook in shock when he came in contact with the bubbling water. I had imagined that he would die quickly, but it was a lengthy process. It was awful. Our lobster shook and rattled in the heat and I desperately wanted to free him, only by then it would have been too late, he had already turned the colour of deepest sunburn.

I must admit that our dinner was delicious. Once the lobster was cooked, I had no problems with eating his meat. However, even as we were falling asleep last night, my boyfriend and I expressed our horror at the cruelty of the process.

It is one thing to eat a piece of fish or chicken that is already dead, but the emotional impact of watching it slow and then freeze once the body has been emptied of all life energy is powerful. I'm not sure that I will ever eat lobster again. It's too traumatic to cook a creature that you are tempted to christen and release to the sea.

Sun worship

We have been sun worshippers since we got here. The Egyptians worshipped the sun and thought that it sailed across the sky on a huge solar barge. Hinduism is choc-packed full of solar dieties. In Chinese mythology, there were originally ten suns in the sky, who were brothers. When they played together in the sky the earth became too hot and so, a hero came and shot down nine of them, leaving just the one sun that we know today. Buddhists recognise a boddhisattva of the sun, who is called Ri Gong Ri Guang. The Aztecs considered the sun god Tonatiuh to be the leader of heaven. They believed that this god represented the fifth cosmic era and that the previous four suns had represented four cosmic eras that had ended. In Indonesia, the sun is sometimes considered to be the 'father' or 'founder' of the tribe. The sun plays an important part in many Indonesian initiation rites.

It is no wonder that we have been so long infatuated by the most dominant star in our skies. The sun's energy is the principal driver of our weather systems and it effects both living and non-living things, in that it feeds the living things and its energies are often stored in non-living things such as peat and coal, to be released later.

Until recently, western society worshipped the sun as a fountain of beauty. Today, many people fear the sun's rays and think of it as a harmful and damaging force. Like almost all things, balance should be the governing force in our relationship with sunshine - too much will not only make us look old and haggard, it might actually make us very sick or even kill us. Likewise, too little sun can result in vitamin D deficiency, which is associated with rickets, auto-immune problems and depression.

From my own point of view I can report that feeling the sun play on my skin improves my mood no end and looking upon a clear skied day never fails to lift my mood. I've traveled across the globe chasing summer from country to country, at considerable cost - every penny of which was worth the expense.

I might scoff at the belief systems of ancient Egyptians and label these to be irrational and ill informed, but the reality is that when it comes to sun worship, I am up there with the best of them. We're creatures of sunlight and we thrive best when dosed liberally and regularly in its kindest rays. Our obsession with the sun is more than an irrational belief system, it's a matter of survival and for that reason, I believe that our relationship with the sun can only become more complex and important as time goes on, rather than less so.

Redirecting my energies

It's time that I turned my energies to energy, that life effusing driver of existence. Our presence here, although fascinating from a philosophical and moral point of view, is based on fuel. We each operate like furnaces, calling for fuel, burning this up and using the raw energy created to pump our bodies and achieve work.

I used a calorie calculator to find out how many calories I should consume every day. Apparently, I require 1990 calories to fuel my body. I burn this up by walking, talking, thinking and even while I sleep. If I don't eat I feel hungry and eventually I will feel weak. In addition to food, I crave other kinds of energy, including external warmth and sunlight.

One of man's greatest discoveries was the ability to make fire on cue. Still today, many of us feel ourselves drawn towards flickering flames and few homes feel complete without the focus of a warm hearth (rather than a television).

I suspect that we search for meaning only after we have successfully found the energy sources that we require to survive. It is only when we have been well fed and warmed that we can turn inwards and focus on our own personal energies.

We give off energy as well as consuming it. If you touch a person's skin it usually feels warm. If you stand next to someone when they are angry you can feel their 'vibrations'. Likewise, being around someone who is very grounded and calm can be calming in itself. And when we have used up all our energies, we go cold and cannot communicate with others, we literally have nothing more to give.

What follows over the next week, or few weeks (depending on what other random thoughts pique my interest) will be a series of blogs that discuss energy in its many forms. You will have to excuse me if things get a little hippified - I recently returned to yoga classes (another to-do successfully underway) and I'm definitely feeling the chilled out energies of practising this exercise for mind, body and soul.

So onwards, into the realm of fuel for life: food, warmth and social sustenance.