And It’s Not Yet 9:00am

It’s not yet 9:00am and I’m deep into my second latte.  I got up at 4:00am to finish off work that could/should have been sent off a month ago.  The hour was not particularly unusual but the fact that I’m sucking so badly is.  I want to nod off.  I will not be using heavy machinery today for fear of lopping off an extremity.

So while I wait for my personal fog to lift I flip through Anthony Bourdain‘s The Nasty Bits (2006), because bite-sized reads are all I can ingest at the moment. (Why his book is lying around is a story unto itself.)  He talks about the founders of the raw food movement, Charlie Trotter and Roxanne Klein, both noted chefs/restauranteurs.  Bourdain notes that Klein was influenced by a chance encounter with actor Woody Harrelson in Thailand, who apparently insisted on eating green papaya salad to the exclusion of everything else.

First of all, why would anyone listen to Woody Harrelson about anything more important than how to be a working Hollywood actor or how to make a bong out of a toilet-paper roll and tinfoil?

And who would listen to anyone who can visit Thailand – a country with one of the most vibrant, varied, exciting culinary cultures on the planet (including a rich tradition of tasty vegetarian fare) – and refuse to sample its proudly served and absolutely incredible bounty?  What kind of cramped, narrow, and arrogant worldview could excuse shutting oneself off totally from the greater part of an ancient and beautiful culture?

To my mind, there’s no difference between Woody, the New Age gourmet, ensuring a clean colon by eating the same thing every day, and the classic worst-case, xenophobic tourist – the one who whether in Singapore, Rome, Hanoi, or Meixco City insists on eating every meal in the hotel restaurant.  One fears “dirty” water, “unsafe” vegetables, “ooky,” “weird,” and unrecognizable local specialties.  The other fears “toxins” and “impurities.”

Bourdain’s comments touch a raw nerve. I like the curiosity part that drives people to try something new, to look at the world in an unusual way and explore potential nuggets of wisdom.  What I wrestle with is when such an idea becomes the hair shirt worn as a badge of meaningless merit to display our uber-goodness or superiority over others.  Then this manufactured superiority is shilled for anxiety-inducing profit.  While this is a food-related example, we do this (at least in North America) with everything we touch, things as well as people.

The logic goes like this: If ‘x’ is good then ‘x+100’ must be that much better. If it’s important to love and spend time with your kid then we need to put that in a box, pump it up, and re-name this new must-have attachment parenting.  If being outside and exercising are good things, then running a 50-mile ultra-marathon in huaraches must be that much better.   The same could be argued for the small house movement and just about anything you can lay eyes on.

It makes for a neat parlour trick.  Take anything you love that brings a sliver of genuine joy or happiness in itself.  Commoditize and distort it until it’s unrecognizable and it takes on a leaching life of its own.  Give it a label that ends in ‘Society,’ ‘Movement,’ or (the ironic) ‘Un-Movement.’  And watch what starts as a sincere, useful idea end up in divisive snobbery or worse, tyranny.

Bourdain calls out fear as the driver for these kinds of impulses, and I agree.  I think there is a whole buffet of fear to choose from, ranging from the reality of global warming (BTW it’s 42 degrees celsius here today, feels like 46) to fear of being no good, an unknown, a nobody.  But while fear is a great tool to cow the masses, it neither motivates nor creates.  I think there is a sweet spot somewhere between said yin and yang that is worth pursuing.  It is the spot where people can be moved to action, when critical action is required.

So maybe the truly radical way to live is not to jump on some newfangled bandwagon; it is to embrace gratitude, look after the stuff you already have, use that stuff to create fun and value, lead by example, share knowledge when asked, find beauty, enjoy the people you love as much as humanly possible, and quit trying to hump everyone’s leg already.