A bowl left untouched—
Not because of loss of appetite,
But because time refused to slow down.
The Grocery Store Between Night Shifts
The automatic doors slid open, releasing the sterile hum of the supermarket into the cold evening air. The overhead lights cast an artificial brightness, too clean, too perfect, as if trying to convince him that the world wasn’t as exhausting as it felt. He stepped inside, shoulders heavy with the weight of a day that had stretched far beyond what a day should be.
His cart rattled over the linoleum floor as he wandered the aisles. The neatly arranged shelves, the predictability of labels, the quiet order of it all—a stark contrast to the chaos of the emergency room where time twisted and folded in unpredictable ways, where a moment stretched into eternity or disappeared entirely.
Tonight, the store was mostly empty. A few stragglers drifted through the aisles, picking up things they would later forget in the back of their refrigerators. A man in a business suit stood staring blankly at a wall of frozen meals, his tie loosened, his face unreadable. A woman cradled a basket of vegetables, absently scrolling through her phone.
He grabbed a bag of chickpeas, a carton of eggs, a handful of herbs he’d never bothered learning the names of. He was trying. He was trying to be the kind of person who cooked, who planned, who made meals that didn’t come out of a plastic wrapper. The kind of person who had time for something as mundane as nutrition.
At the checkout, he swiped his card.
Error.
The cashier, a girl barely out of high school, sighed and shook her head. “The system’s been acting up all day,” she muttered, already looking past him.
He exhaled slowly. The thought crossed his mind, fleeting but sharp—just leave it. Walk out. Get a falafel from the corner stand and be done with it.
But something in him resisted.
Not pride, not stubbornness—just exhaustion with his own habits. The way he always reached for the easy thing, the thing that wouldn’t demand anything from him. The way hunger had become something to be dealt with, not something to be satisfied.
So he waited. The machine beeped, reset. The transaction went through. He carried his groceries home.
The Myth of Control
He had cooked every night this week.
Chickpea stew, roasted sweet potatoes, something vaguely resembling a shakshuka. He prepped, stored, portioned, packed. Labeled containers lined his fridge, a quiet reassurance that he was getting it together.
And yet—
At 3:42 AM, on the second day of back-to-back shifts, he sat in a break room that smelled like burnt coffee and fluorescent lights. He reached into his bag and pulled out the meal he had carefully packed the night before.
And then—nothing.
He had no time to eat it.
The shift swallowed him whole. The ER doors never stopped opening, the machines never stopped beeping, the urgency of other people’s lives pressed in, crushing, suffocating. There was always someone to stabilize, someone to save, someone whose pain demanded more than his own hunger.
By the time he reached for the container again, it was too late. His appetite had left him.
He stared at the untouched food. It felt ridiculous now, all the effort, all the planning. As if control had ever really been his to hold.
Wabi-sabi teaches that perfection is not the goal. That things break, that plans fail, that not everything will go the way you think it should.
A meal uneaten is not a failure—it is a reminder.
A skipped step is not the end—it is just another way forward.
A life that is full cannot always be orderly.
Maybe he wouldn’t always get it right. Maybe some nights, he would grab whatever was closest, whatever would silence the gnawing emptiness inside.
And maybe that was okay.
Lessons from a Meal That Never Was
- Planning is important, but so is knowing when to let go.
- Hunger is more than just food—it is time, space, the permission to pause.
- Not everything that is prepared will be consumed. That doesn’t make it meaningless.
- Life is not meant to be perfectly structured. Some days, you just do your best.
- You do not have to be perfect to be trying.
He stood in his apartment later that morning, the city still dark outside, the hum of early traffic beginning its slow build. The fridge door stood open, casting a faint yellow glow across the floor. His untouched meal sat where he had left it, waiting.
He picked up the container, peeled back the lid.
The food was cold. But it was there. Still good. Still enough.
He took a bite.
And for the first time in days, he let himself taste it.
life 
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