Free Narrative Essays - A Bowl of Soup :: Personal Narrative Essay Example

A Bowl of Soup It was a uncomplicated bowl of soup. Chicken with rice, from a can. But as I sit down down to eat my lunch, a sudden public opinion flashed through my mountain pass What a miracle this bowl of soup is A savory, golden broth, bright orangeness carrot coins, plump grains of rice, bits of chicken. Struck deeply by this realization, I evidently sat for a minute watching thin wisps of steam boost from the surface. Just a bowl of soup. Id never given much thought to the origins of my food. I simply went to the store, threw produce and cans and boxes into my cart, and brought them home. But Ive been thinking a fate lately about the interconnectedness of all things, and a great sympathy coalesced for me in this blue-and-white bowl. In a flash, I glimpsed the giant electronic network of nature and people that had brought this soup to my table. First, of course, came the sunlight and water and soil in which farmers grew all the ingredients. Then truckers hauled th e harvest to market and later to the processing plant. Workers thither made the soup in a detailed process that requires colossal electricity generated by the labor of coal miners and hundreds of utility employees. Workers in some other factory made the cans, which were fashioned from ore dug from the earth by more(prenominal) miners even farther away. Then someone else transported the cans of soup to my local store, where other person placed them on the shelf. Bankers were also involved, and secretaries, and the printers who made the labels, and who knows who else? Plus, there are my clients and the publishers who pay me for the writing I do. Without their belief in me, I could non have purchased this amazing can of soup, nor the cheese and tomato sandwich I ate along with it. The web shimmered in my minds eye, each connection lead to many more I couldnt even begin to imagine. Then I remembered recent video images of relief workers standing in the backs of trucks and fli nging loaves of bread that are snatched in mid-air by outstretched refugee hands.