Get Over It

 When it comes to cooking, as with so many other things in life, I naturally fall into a comfort groove. Then I get stuck. Sometimes the groove is the plateau after I have mastered something I strived to achieve. Other times, it is something easy for me to do, and that enables laziness: Egg roll, anyone?

During these times of "comfort" cooking, I notice a grayness in life in general. The great John Lennon said it all on Walls and Bridges: "You don't know what you got until you lose it." Oddly, I can still cook things I have cooked many times or things that are easy for me because I have cooked them into submission. This can lull me into a false sense of creative well-being. It distracts from the cure, which, for me, is stepping way outside my comfort zone.

The road to wellness looks something like this: The fuse is trying and cooking new things. Once that is lit, everything else bursts into more color, more enthusiasm, and a more robust life. So for me, cooking is life.

So why do I forget this so often?

There has got to be something else, a flanking factor in the blind spot that I am missing. I am not sure what that is, but I suspect it is hyper-focusing on the needed tasks: house, automobiles, work projects, and the surprise emergency that we all encounter here and there. Perspective is a peculiar companion.

I have been chasing mechanical anomalies in our Nissan. I recently took care of some previously unknown major interval services and regular service, then chased a noise that made me aware the rear brakes needed service. Like so many exercises like this, the noise continued.

I have listened to this car hammering the road for the last 400 miles, hoping it was the tire chop which was caused by my neglecting rotation. Of course, that task got back-burnered by the bigger tasks I let block me, and then nothing gets done.

Photo by Bianca Ackermann on Unsplash

Finally, I had enough, and I booked an appointment at Walmart for all-new tires and made them discard the heavy-duty snow tires that still looked new but were so chopped that I thought they might fail a wheel bearing. This is where I find my blind spot.

I cannot tell you how the war inside of me rages when I have to make a decision like this. But now that it is done, I realize I am free. There is no turning back. I am telling myself to get over it. Why? Because I can see more clearly when I cut the weight of these things from my life.

It's hard for me. I grew up with little, but I didn't see it that way. It made me resourceful and creative. Now I look around me and notice that some of the items I keep around because I see value in them amount to little more than the bars of a jail cell I personally built.

I feel this is where stagnation can happen when it comes to cooking. Last night I threw together a trash-dinner of tteokbokki, made from 5 different things I had lying around. It was amazing. This is how it is supposed to be. 

Jettison that weight, tear up the kitchen, make it happen, and just get over it. That is where true life begins, in flavor, in words, in breath, in life, and in freedom.