Stuff happens and even when it’s ostensibly good stuff it can feel really bad for a myriad of reasons and when it feels bad (especially when it’s supposed to be good), that’s when I cook the worst. My hands are flighty and wild as if cut off from my brain, and they grasp and pinch and chop and toss too fast. I take shortcuts: balance the sheet tray on the knife on the cutting board, add pasta before the water is properly boiling, crowd the pan with cauliflower. I try to do too much at once. I’m distracted, is what it is, but knowing this doesn’t un-distract me.
I cook because I know I need to take care of myself, but as I persevere in cooking so badly, I suspect that my body doesn’t really believe it. I go through the motions of care. I put on an old album, open the window, spread the vegetables out on the table. But all the while my foot is tap-tap-tapping in expectation of feeling better. Every moment of joy I’ve experienced in the kitchen comes flooding back to me as a rebuke of my present reality. They remind me that I have all the tools I need to be satisfied and yet, for some reason, I’m not. The reason I’m not happy must be me.
When the things that are supposed to make me happy aren’t making me happy that’s when it’s time to stop trying to be happy. I don’t mean to Give up, but Continue. Continue doing the things but lose the expectation of how to feel about them. It’s the expectation, or the discomfort triggered by expectation, that Buddhists call the “second arrow” of suffering — the parable goes that a guy gets hit with an arrow, which sucks for obvious reasons, and then his reaction is, “This is so unfair, I wish I hadn’t been hit by an arrow” and that’s the second arrow. A more familiar scene is a kid throwing a tantrum outside a tourist attraction: “You said this was going to be fun! Well. This. Is. Not. FUN!!!!” Like the kid, I cultivate expectations about how I should experience things that happen in my life, and when that’s not how I take them, I feel cheated by the universe. I’m not okay with being just okay. I think I should be joyful, and that’s the second arrow.
To continue forward without expectation is a tricky project. Expectation is intrinsic to cooking and a reason to do it at all. I’m a cook first and foremost because I want to satisfy my own desires. I’ve started a little exercise at the beginning of my No Recipe class, where we close our eyes and think about a food like potato or zucchini and then discuss the ideas and cravings that come to mind. I’m usually very good at discerning exactly what I want to eat and I encourage other people to practice discernment as well. But there are days when I can’t get the things I want or for various reasons I’m just not able to cook them the way I imagine, and then I need to cling less urgently to the desired dish and how it will make me feel. Maybe I will not be completely full or maybe Miro will throw spoonfuls of farro to the ground even though he ate half a bowl of it yesterday, or maybe even a perfect meal won’t make me feel perfect inside, and that will have to be okay. I’ll continue, picking up the spoon and microwaving peas for Miro and putting away the leftovers which I might want tomorrow and eating a piece of toast with tahini and honey before bed if I need it. By not focusing on happiness most of all, I create a different kind of space for peace.
To continue without expectation just means opening up to those moments that already arise without expectation. An ordinary evening is crowded with them. A little softness that’s the cat at my elbow. A voice singing It’s All Coming Back to Me Now with surprising talent from the sidewalk under the window. The tahini and honey are a marble painting on toast. I don’t try to feel good about these things necessarily, but I see them happening. I have faith that on better days, these moments are all I need.
Faith? An icky word, to someone who always associated it with right-wing fundamentalism. But as I grow older, it’s a concept that’s become more useful to me. Not faith based on someone’s words, but on all the experiences I’ve had so far. I can trust the knowledge that soon something will shift, and I won’t feel the same way I do now. I know that every now and then I have these moments where it feels like everything I’ve ever done leads up to the one I’m in, and that I won’t wish for anything to have been different. So, I reach out for faith in the process.* Of cooking, of adapting, of time passing. Faith is easier to practice than happiness, anyway.
Nothing moves faster than the mind, is something else I’ve heard during Buddhist talks and I see it all the time in my own. From shock to dismay to impatience to peace, and then a wind rustles leaves outside and they sparkle and I forget everything and in sneaks a brief shaft of joy.
*Is this another expectation? Probably. There is a forever nesting of expectations and ways to break free of them.