the flavor of life.

I burn food a lot. Not intentionally, obviously--but while cooking, and often. Pasta, omelets, fish, quesadillas—there isn't a culinary quintessential that I haven’t royally screwed up.  It’s remarkable, really. I swear that I set out with all the best intentions and plans, but more often than not I cannot NOT burn something at least a little. The other day I put a sweet potato in the oven only to have the kitchen fill up with smoke ten minutes later. Turns out a cookie had dropped during my last baking expedition, and was now ablaze and impossible to retrieve. I had to let it burn out, which was both terrifying and also sort of beautiful, in a campfire kind of way.  

Since I’m human (and being so we like to accommodate to our weaknesses), I like to think of that toasty layer of my food as a “special seasoning”. Oh, you didn't want a dash of smoky flavoring? Sorry, and, eat it anyway. You think I would be better as a somewhat well-adjusted twenty five year old, but whatever. Usually I am the only recipient of my food and lucky for me I’m not a harsh critic. It’ll work itself out eventually.

In reality, however, the burnt nature of my food often spoils what could have been a pretty good meal. It cuts through all the other flavors, masking the careful effort I put into each layer of my dish. It prevents the food from being what it could be.

And what I realized is, fear is like this.

Life is offered to us, beautiful and whole and bright, and fear spreads like wildfire and burns it to the ground. First slowly, so that we don’t know it’s happening, then all at once. And our confidence is shaken. We stare sadly at the last of the glowing embers in front of us and wonder, how; how ever did that happen? We lose ourselves and turn up like burnt toast—dry, and ashen, void of all the flavors that we once held dear.

Now, I believe that there is a place for fear. It keeps us safe in many situations, warning us that there may be danger ahead. But sometimes, fear gets a little too bold, a little too comfortable in our bodies. It starts to spread to areas it’s not welcome, starts to impede upon our truth. It becomes almost a second language to us, telling us lies about ourselves and the years to come.

And we react to this in a myriad of ways. Some of us run, avoiding anything that may be too risky by making ourselves smaller than we really are. Others of us push forward, terrified that if we don’t keep producing the world will deem us unworthy. So we fluctuate between the two extremes, never whole, never stopping to realize that perhaps our fear is telling us the wrong thing.

Fear lets us know that something is worth fighting for. It alerts us to the sense that there is something that we love, something that we long for, something that we absolutely do not want to lose. This is why so many people fear death, failure, relationships, and much more. We don’t want to watch what is meaningful to us burn down; we don’t want to experience loss in so many ways.

And that is OK. Being afraid is OK. It’s not weakness, but incredible strength. The trick is not to let our fear get the best of us—not to let it be our reality. Emotions come and go like the weather. A storm does not indicate that the world will always be dark and grey, and fear doesn't either. We get to choose what our fear tells us, how we wish to use it.

And so, I am learning to push through the storm and fight back the fear. I am learning, as Susan Jeffers put it, to “feel the fear and do it anyway”. We must keep cooking, even when it all turns up burnt. We must exercise our right to believe in ourselves and the supreme goodness that is living and falling and getting back up and doing it all over again. Most importantly, we must not be afraid of fear. 

It’s only a little smoky flavoring, after all. 

worthy of our sufferings.

"They must not lose hope but should keep their courage in the certainty that the  hopelessness of our struggle did not detract from its dignity and meaning" Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

I feel that my life has been stolen from me. It didn't happen all at once, but so slowly and in much the same way that a plant dies. The petals fall day by day until finally, all that is left is a sad, lifeless stalk that once seemed to radiate with beauty.

I blame New York for the thievery. I came here on a dollar and a dream, so sure that this is where my life would actualize. So sure that this was were I would become my truest self, where I would buy back all the years that I felt were wasted on a person that was only waiting to be born.

But the opposite has happened. And honestly, who of us can look at our life and feel that we are where we thought we would be at this time? Life is full of regret, and very little satisfaction. We wander, restless down to our bones and unsure that we will ever be filled. We search, earnestly, for that which can bring us life.

We search.

And sometimes, we remember. We find that which we clung to in difficulties before, we find what our souls were made to take comfort in. But we also find that we have new questions, new sufferings. We think we have learned, adjusted to the path that we have journeyed on for so many lonely years. But this is life, and we never will get a perfect score. We keep learning, keep growing, keep facing new challenges until we realize--life does not get easier.

We must get stronger.

So we linger on the other side of resiliency, staring at the road before us and trying to find a way to cut corners. We want anything but to go through it, to face whatever it is that we fear most, We want to be able to look it in the eye and proudly stand straight and tall--to go into battle with our heads lifted high, but this is no easy task. It's certainly not for the faint of heart or for the easily distracted. It requires determination and focus, it requires fortitude. It requires us to look beyond ourselves and our immediate sufferings, to realize that our sufferings can impact change. To acknowledge that though our pain threatens to take us under, it is our pain that eventually leads us to rise.

And in this place, it is not hope that propels us forward. It is faith. Faith that our suffering does in fact produce perseverance.  And that perseverance, though it bleeds us dry, will eventually construct character out of the dust our weary feet have left behind.. Because hope is not born out of knowing where we are going.. It is born out of not knowing anything at all, except that light always overcomes the darkness.

Frankl speaks constantly of "being worthy of our sufferings". And in this small insight, he has named our entire existence--to have courage, to hope in the face of insurmountable odds, to believe that there is dignity and grace and meaning that makes our struggle worthwhile.

This week, one of my clients said (with little words and profound wisdom) that our time spent wandering the desert would come to a close much quicker  if we just acknowledged why we were there in the first place. Though I've studied Isaiah many times, there was something about the sincerity of this statement and the humility in his understanding of it that struck me by surprise. Not necessarily why we were there, insomuch as the things that may have edged us closer to our own particular  wasteland. But why we were there--the meaning for our lives and the lives of those around us. What we were meant to accomplish in the desert, what we are meant to create.

Because, to grow something out of pain--to see a bloom rising up out of the cracks and in spite of its environment, that is true hope. It is one that has been firmly rooted and is ready to weather the elements.

It is hope that cannot be taken away from us, for generations to come. It can be passed down, passed around and instilled in those around us.

And just like wildflowers, once it takes flight, it cannot be stopped. It is infectious and true in the best possible way, it is all-encompassing.

So that very slowly, but with great certainty, the desert is outgrown--leaving behind a garden bursting with more life than we ever dreamed or imagined--leaving behind evidence of what we so craved and never thought we would achieve:

a reason to hope.