To All the Foodies who Believe They are Foodies

![bread] (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9nD7hPHDp4Y/VP_FN-DK4RI/AAAAAAAAANI/VOCZk8QQNhA/s1600/2.pic_hd.jpg)The Bread Basket at Le Diplomate - Missing the French Vibe

![creme brulee] (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-G8B3h6TdNgA/VP_FN1cUVYI/AAAAAAAAANE/l6_n97yv4WA/s1600/3.pic_hd.jpg) The Best Creme Brûlée and Warm Madeleine

 My First Egg Benedict - Can't forget the Hollandaise Sauce

 Chocolate Oreo Marshmallow Ice Cream - Very creamy and milky, not too sweet

 Peanut Butter Frosting Cupcake at Baked and Wired

I have been obsessed with food for a while. It all started with weight loss. I get more anxious about what I am eating and what I should eat, so I check out food blogs, menus, and food pictures everyday. I admit that being such a foodie is time-consuming, yet there seems to be no other way of getting food pleasure without gaining weight. The monotonous limitation is painful. It leaves me no choice, no freedom to choose what I do with my time and my life.

From time to time, I was able to get out of this anxious bubble by being distracted by something else, like seeking the opportunity to work for the Cambodian Restoration Project for the Angkor temples. Although this kind of experience was momentary and my heightened focus could only last for a certain amount of time, I was able to see another world above my food-obsession world, and in that world pleasure does not only come from food or having a nice body. The fake intelligent illusion, if you call it this, transcended my obsessional boredom to a passionate pursuit, as the 19th century philosophers who believe art transcends worldly elements to pure simpleness and human origin. Perhaps one is superior than the other, and by definition passion is above obsession.

One of the most popular and ideal professions is food-blogger. It is a very attractive job - working with beautiful ingredients and creating a beautiful dish of your own, then write up a beautiful article describing the beautiful taste of what you created with some beautiful pictures. I was deeply attracted by this food art, because my eyes were filled with delicious images and somehow the tastes got transmitted to my brain processor. Analyzing this obsession from the philosophical view, food blogging combines humans' life instinct with the transcendence of art and it gives birth to a product that everybody who have leisure and are trapped by boredom would love. An ideal and luxurious task to do, indeed. But when most people in the society start to pursue such pleasure, it becomes dangerous. Obsession with a hint of laziness controls most of us, blocking us from distinguishing passion, love, and ambition from obsession.

Humans are by nature too small to see the big. We are too lazy to climb the high. We are too weak to stand on the top. But humans have the amazing imaginational approach to the higher end and so we are always in the struggle between the finite and the infinite. Sometimes we lose our directions on the path because we mistake illusion for the truth, misuse imagination as the primary source of motivation, misbelieve that the delicious images in front of us are real tastes. The truthful universal big intimidates us and we recoil as we get nearer to the truths. The imaginational sensory big overwhelms us by seducing us with comfort and we are blocked by the all-too-real illusions. If this kind of pleasure is the pleasure that you seek, be brave to face the fact that one day you will desire to stand on the top, fervently and extremely, and wonder where you have spent all your energy and complain why there is a top. Comfort and boredom do not belong to humans. Humans are conquerers by nature.

And so, as an encouragement to myself, abandon your desire of indulging in your obsessions, open your eyes to the world above, transcend your imagination to your passion, and stand bravely amid ice and mountain heights. Stop staring at the food photos and start eating.