Patience is calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in your mind.
David G. Allen
An Unexpected Dialogue
In an ordinary afternoon, I felt a conversation taking place. Was it with God or only my imagination? I just felt as if wisdom had come down from somewhere and was staring at me ,ever so humorously critical, but with a glistening promise. And, I might add, with a pinch of wonder.
“Today you’re going to relearn cooking”
“Oh, is that so? Hmm, isn’t my cooking good enough?”
“It is good, but you have forgotten a simple and very important principle of cooking.”
“Hmm, and what is that?”
“To have delight while in the process. To cook is to appreciate. To cook is to wait for the proper timing, and to cut the right ingredients. Preferably methods that might take longer, but will taste as love and kindness had been added with a pinch of salt.”
“And how could this be possible? How can abstract feelings turn into ingredients?”
“Hands are carriers. They carry objects, but also carry stories. A newborn held tight, sweet strokes of assurance given by fathers and mothers, a handheld grip of a lover. These stories carry feelings, and when you cook, with patience, embracing each step, you become a storyteller.”
The Tyranny of the Practical
Living and cooking had become straining to me. Everything needed to be practical and fast. I always felt I had a clock ticking and that at any moment the alarm would yell how long I was taking and that people were hungry.
Quarantined, I started to have time.
I started to notice how my cooking wasn’t pleasurable. I noticed as well how I was dependent on methods that probably didn’t make the food tastier. If I knew ways to make food tastier and had time to create, why not do it? It would take patience, time management plus organization, and probably a total change of perspective. In the end, would it be worth it?
Do I even know how to make my own seasoning from scratch?
I sliced the garlic in tiny pieces. With a knife. I could have used three thousand devices that could have made the process take seconds, but I felt that I had to experience those long 5 minutes (maybe 2, in my mind actually it felt like 10). I put on some music, sometimes humming and swaying while tasting a hot spoon of magical sauce, just like I remembered my mom love to do. I started listening, and not just trying to get things done. I let creativity flow through my mind, through my hands. I started to use things that I wouldn’t, but because I listened, those ingredients would whisper what they needed more.
Learning to Slow Down
Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.
R. Buckminster Fuller
Technology is not our enemy. Making things practical aren’t the villains, but forgetting the importance of waiting and the eminence of patience can be. How, if things happen in a different order than what we had planned, they can still be joyful and wonderful!
What could be the wrong reasons, and what could be the right ones?
Could simply cooking remind me of things that I had forgotten that were important?
And yet, I am no master to all these elements. Like I once said to my mother while we were discussing important things in life: “I am still learning”.
I’m learning to pick wisely, to spend time in what matters, to cut with patience and to listen to the right melody. To sway in the right tempo, and to embrace the right feelings.
STAY HOME, STAY SAFE, STAY PATIENT!
Lidia Krüger Braconnot is an adventurer and a storytelling enthusiast. Having lived in many different places, she now lives in Brazil, where she is an English teacher for all ages. She is 21 years old with a dream of expressing in beautiful detail what life is about, hoping to reach out to people in a comical and lighthearted way.
