High maintenance, low impact: Who feeds you?

Distance from Singapore – its culture, norms and practices – has given me a hyper awareness of the changes around me each time I come back. Having lived and worked in Timor-Leste for over a decade, I don’t get to participate in the slowly evolving processes that have gotten Singapore society from point A to B. Instead, each time I come back, I feel as though I’m teleported to the current reality and I have to make sense of what is going on. Another way of putting it is that I don’t have the luxury of the journey, but I find myself at the destination suddenly and I have to try and describe where I find myself. This piece of writing is largely an attempt to do that. And as I map this new terrain, perhaps its longtime inhabitants may also see their world with new eyes.

Also, to further set the context, I have to state from the beginning that I don’t think I’m any better than the average Singaporean next door, but because of the vastly different context that I’ve lived and worked in for over a decade, I have gleaned some different perspectives. Think of what I’m writing next as reflections and advice after being in bootcamp for 13 years. Out of sheer necessity (not moral superiority), I've had to live a simpler and more independent life, without relying so much on the services that entire industries provide to make life in Singapore so comfortable. 

Like many people, I’ve been reading the news a lot more to keep up with developments in the fight to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. I was quite disturbed by news of fights erupting between staff at F&B outlets and delivery riders over delayed orders. The coveted items that have sparked two fights have been…bubble tea and fast food. The story goes like this – F&B outlets struggle with a reduced work force, orders pour in without means to cancel them, and the few staff on duty cannot cope. Delivery riders for whom time is literally money are stressed when their orders are delayed. Eventually, tempers fray, someone loses self-control, harsh words are exchanged and a skirmish breaks out. Even the police had to be involved.

Who’s to blame? Before we can even ponder this question, I suggest we think about who’s not in the story. Who is insulated from this stressful situation, but enabling it away from the glare of the spotlight? The consumer.

One of the things I could not help but notice on my trips home in recent years is the increase in food delivery riders on our streets. I find this phenomenon intriguing. From travelling all across Singapore to eat at our favourite places, we have gone on to expect an amazing array of food to be delivered to our doorstep, in disposables that we do not have to wash. With time, people grow accustomed to the conveniences of food delivery. From being used to it, we go on to feel entitled to satisfying our food cravings with minimal effort and time. An entire generation will grow up not knowing that there was a time in Singapore when food delivery did not exist (in the same way that many of you reading this cannot imagine a time when there was no MRT and everyone took buses!)

I don’t remember where I first came across the phrase “high maintenance, low impact”. It’s such a succinct way of describing what I find so disturbing about these times that we live in. We are such high maintenance people. We can live the way we do, only because so many people are toiling so hard to make our comfortable lifestyles possible. We consume so, so much resources.

Think about it. How many people need to serve me so that I can eat? A whole army, quite literally. Farmers. People who rear animals. People who slaughter them. Packers. Factory production workers. Drivers who spend hours on the road transporting food. Warehouse staff who take inventory and ship off orders. Vendors who are up at the crack of dawn to trade. Cooks who labour over hot stoves and ovens. And more recently, delivery riders who bring food to our doorstep, come rain or shine. Many of these people work long shifts day and night, in often uncomfortable settings and lowly paid jobs, just so I can eat, whatever I want, whenever I want.

Throughout human history, we have always had to work for our food. In our hunter-gatherer days, people didn’t eat breakfast first so they could hunt. They hunted so they could eat breakfast. (This point was made in a fitness podcast I listened to recently and I laughed out loud. Credit goes to Dr Jade Teta.) When mankind learnt agriculture, it was the same. Farmers put in backbreaking work first, month after month, so they could harvest later and feed their families and communities. Generations of mothers spent hours shopping for, storing, cleaning, washing, preparing and cooking food, so they could serve their families meals. There is a certain work ethic at play here, a certain honesty and integrity that speaks to me. I will serve, I will get my hands dirty and do the work, I will invest my time, and do my part to meet my own needs, and those of others who rely on me. Where is this work ethic nowadays?

I’m not judging people who don’t cook, or who rely heavily on food delivery services because each person has a different story. I can understand that some people really need extra help getting food prepared and delivered, like caregivers, the elderly, the frazzled working mother with young kids. Others simply have no interest in cooking, and I accept that, though I will still encourage you to learn. I’ve also realized that our families of origin play a big part in shaping our attitudes and practices around food preparation, and these may not be easy to change in a short time.

But I do want to provoke some of us to think deeper about our reliance on others to make ourselves comfortable. Is a lifestyle that requires others to do all the hard work of feeding me sustainable? At which point does my consumption habits become exploitative? Given that the human appetite for pleasure and comfort can be potentially boundless, how can I set self-imposed boundaries to stop myself from overindulgence in a way that kills character? How will I know when I have become too lazy, or too greedy?

I want to challenge you to make a deliberate choice to shun the “high maintenance, low impact” lifestyle. Could you perhaps rely less on others to provide for you and make you comfortable, either by accepting a more modest and simpler lifestyle, or by stepping up to be more diligent and active in meeting your own needs? If you tried doing both of the above at the same time, perhaps you might find a new equilibrium somewhere in the middle. That could be the sweet spot of sustainability for you, and that point is different for each one of us. Could you also try to up the positive impact you have on your community? So many people are stepping up so beautifully in this time to serve our migrant workers, the elderly, and other vulnerable groups in society. What is your unique contribution?