When I lived in India, I was appalled when I was told there would be no more mangoes until the season began again next year. I was not used to this. Back in the US, I had bananas and apples with my oatmeal every damn day. Plus, I had traveled thousands of miles for mangoes. And now they have the nerve to just stop producing?

But by the time mango season returned, I had become accustomed to finding only the food that was in season. I realized how beautiful it is to live in a respectful exchange with the earth, taking what is offered when it is given. There is something sacred and fulfilling about living in this way—in accepting rather than taking. Doing so, I feel drawn to be conscious of each bite.

There is an element of control and objectification in our food system, that most of us are (ostensibly) unaware of. It does not strike me odd that a nation that expects unreserved access to the earth’s gifts also allows a man, in some cases, unreserved access to his wife’s body. Nor does it seem odd that, in a nation in which food is considered a commodity, people rarely find nourishment and healing from their meals. Nor that, as a result, our health–the care of our bodies–is outsourced to for-profit corporations.

We expect our food to be produced exactly to our specifications, which, in our culture, are often based on taste, convenience, or even cultural trends. The food-object is created for us. We want it. We will get it.

I wonder what would happen, then, if we ceased to think of an apple as a “thing.” A thing is a commodity. It can be packaged, sold, and profited from. It can be grown by someone for someone else. Ownership is clearly defined.This is why apples are stored in atmosphere-controlled storage through the winter, to preserve them—that is, to preserve their “thingness.”

But what if we saw the apple as a process. A process is not static. A process is full of life, constantly emerging. It is a cycle of death and rebirth. Our game is to catch it at the point in that process when it will benefit us. That is, when it will benefit our process of being a human.

We are not static either. We are constantly changing. It is a beautiful moment when two processes—human and apple—meet and are able to benefit one another. I throw the apple core away from the deck, and seeds are scattered.

To see an apple as a process is to respect its beingness, to understand that it is a being like ourselves. We cannot possess the process that is an apple. Even with our technology, we can only slow it down. Apples that have been stored in atmosphere-controlled storage taste like Styrofoam when they’re removed. And they soon take up where they left off, decaying to return to the earth.

When we deeply feel the beingness of an apple, we cannot turn it back into a thing. We cannot, then, possess it, force it to adhere to our preferences, or manipulate it for profit. We can honor it, appreciate it, and certainly take it as nourishment.

That makes me think of the people who are, today, waxing and boxing apples for shipping from Australia to China. Each apple is inspected for blemishes that are not pleasing to the eye. Each one is labeled and boxed, palleted, and priced. Then I think of the girls I work with who are victims of sex trafficking. I wonder if objectifying a girl is similar to objectifying other living creatures. And if so, might changing our perspective a little actually change a great deal more?

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Written by Nicholas Tippins