acceptance of the rainbow

In recent weeks we have been watching the new Queer Eye series on Netflix, one nightly episode after dinner as emotional dessert.  The Fab 5, a group of celebratorily gay guys in all their fabulousness, help people find their better self with so much compassion, kindness, humor, honesty and laughs that you’ve just got to love them, even if you are culturally conservative.  How could you not like these joyful guys, besides their obvious great looks and wardrobes?  

On the surface the show is about helping their somewhat lost subjects to find their inner beauty through lifestyle changes. But the secondary message is just as important, if not more so. I love the message of acceptance the series conveys. The way to shift perspectives is obviously not through preaching, arguing or judging, but through the heart and by example.  This is a good one.

tending your inner life

In Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari mentions that we have lost our ability to dream, and with it the realization of how important dreaming is to the integration between inner and outer life. We forget to dream, literally and figuratively.  

Dreaming while asleep is the mind’s way of processing what hit your mind during the day and you haven’t had a chance to digest on a mental level yet.  Our fast paced life doesn’t encourage inner life self-care and training ourselves to remember our dreams and pondering their meaning. You might keep a dream journal by your bed and write down what dream shreds you remember as soon as you wake up in the morning – a lot of dreaming happens during the lighter morning hour sleep just before you wake up.  If you tend to wake up in the middle of the night you could keep a journal in the bathroom and write down your dream bits. Dream journaling sends a message to your subconscious to remember your dreams, and with time you’ll remember more and more so you can work with the messages.

Dreaming in the other sense is imagining what you might want - to do, to be, to have.  Wouldn’t it be nice if…...? Ohh, I’d love to do……………..It’s creative visualization, and that is a way to manifest what you want (as long as you actually know what you want – not what you don’t want).  This too often gets drummed out of us as a waste of time in this oh so material world that is often oh so rational. But if you can dream it you can manifest it.

Dreaming is good for you because it brings your internal dialogue into awareness.  

food as a portal

Food is an amazing portal in so many ways.   One of the games at our children’s birthday parties was to blindfold them and offer them small bites to taste.  Then they had to guess what they’d eaten.  This got them to shift from identifying the food by sight to concentrating on taste, texture, and smell.

 In the most basic way, food as the provider of energy, is an existential requirement.  But our relationship with food would be limited and limiting, and so much less meaningful, if we saw it as nothing but fuel.  Even our pets appreciate diversity in their diet, and no gorilla eats the same thing every day.

 From a basic biochemical aspect, mineral rich and nutritious food promotes cell growth and cell regeneration.  Watch a wound close much faster if you eat superior foods, or your skin clearing visibly when you drink a green smoothie every day.  It’s a direct relationship between inputs and outputs.    

 All food comes from the earth.  Food is thus our direct connection to nature.   When we have a sustainable relationship with the environment, it’s easy to grow beautiful, tasty and nutritious food without depleting the environment.  Healthy food is the basis for good energy, good digestion, good mental health and a vigorous body. When the soil your carrot, apple or grain comes from, is healthy and mineral rich, you in turn will be thriving.

Food contributes to celebration.  It connects us to our cultural heritage, something those who celebrate Passover or Easter surely appreciate this weekend.  Through the special holiday dishes from our traditions we celebrate and enact the culture and geography we come from.   The stories behind Harozet or Easter lamb are what fills the dishes with depth and meaning, not the ingredients themselves, and participating in such traditions ties us to the web of life.

Cooking together and sharing a meal is a great way to connect with friends and family.  Food simply tastes better when shared, and the experience surrounding a shared meal is wonderful.

Food can be indulgent and imparts a deeper connection to our senses.  You can derive so much pleasure from the different tastes, textures, colors, temperatures, sights (Instagram!) and smells of food.  

 Food in its many ways is a connection to and celebration of life!

be nice to yourself

How’s your relationship with yourself?  Do you take good care of yourself?  Do you love yourself?   Or perhaps you haven’t given it much thought.

Last night I watched this delightful episode of Queer Eye (love those guys) S03E01 in which they helped Jody to see her inner beauty by transforming her outer self.  They said something like, “When you recognize your inner beauty, it reflects on the outside.”  I just made that up but it’s the gist of what they said.  Jody truly shone and sparkled after they helped her to express her inner beauty without making her into someone she is not.  The transformation was so subtle yet so powerful.

Taking care of yourself means appreciating your inner beauty, your inner worth,  loving yourself, and expressing that love through the attention you pay yourself.  Selfcare can take many forms, or all of them:  

·     More sleep, because you know you can’t run on empty, and sleep heals mentally and physically.

·     Eating nutritious food, because you know that food can heal.

·     Wearing clothes that make you shine, because you feel good when they reflect your inner self. 

·     Moving your body, because you love your body and want to take good care of it so it looks and feels its best.

·     Maintaining a healthy weight, because the best weight for your body type is a good base for your health in general.

·     More me-time, for time to just do what you love to do.

·     More reflection time, because when your inner life remains uninspected and ignored a part of you remains unreconciled. 

Many women are selfless, taking good care of all others in their inner and outer circle, but forgetting themselves along the way.  Many guys were raised to ignore their inner life and to disregard their physical appearance beyond the exercise part.  Where on the spectrum do you fall? How nice are you to yourself?

reboot time

After a bit of soul searching (guilt?) I gave my daughter off from school yesterday.  She was dragging for various reasons, had a test ahead of her, and a big first event  at her accepted college coming up, and I just knew that she couldn’t give her best without some R&R.   That same morning I received my daily Note from the Universe, Mike Dooley’s awesome, witty, wise and humorous emails I find in my in-box (I always wonder how he has been able to come up with them for all these years…).  It read, “What if it was your downtime, your lounging-in-bed-too-long time, your walkabout time, and your blow-Friday-off time, that made possible your greatest achievements?  Would they still make you feel guilty?  Or would you allow yourself to enjoy them?”  It was a confirmation that I had made the right decision.   

 We need in between downtime, not the big vacation time, but instead boring time, nothing time, rest time, decompression time, staring-in-the-air time, sleep time, meditation time, a walk in the woods, a day off, or doing-something-creative time.  This time serves as a germination period, time to collect yourself, time to reboot. It settles down the mental dust, reshuffles our outlook on priorities, and gives us back our energy. 

 Nature has its wintertime to begin the growth cycle from scratch again each spring. We can’t wait that long, and we can’t take off that long (although it sure sounds enticing). And please enjoy that down time before you get worn down, that way you can truly savor it instead of nursing your cold in bed feeling lousy. Here an earlier post along those lines.

micro enjoyments

The thrill of a new car wears off quite quickly.  A new house becomes routine after a while.  The charm of material acquisitions, big and small, fades into the background after a bit. Remember that new screwdriver or box grater you bought a year ago?  Of course not!  It’s not only expensive to create oxytocin rushes by buying stuff, especially big stuff, we also don’t always need more stuff.

 So what else makes your life enjoyable? What sparks a spontaneous smile?  What makes you feel good?

 Experiences are what creates enjoyment and meaning, and I think here too there are two kinds.  Epic experiences, such as our vacations a few years ago to Italy or Alaska.  Remember when?  Those live in me forever.  However, those big ones are few and far in between, and involved and costly.  But then there are the little experiences, the ones that come and go many times a day and simply make your life a bit more pleasant.  Perhaps it’s the smile across your child’s face, the burst of intense taste from a ripe piece of fruit, the sun peeking out from behind a cloud, the beautiful white and pink spring blooms that are popping up everywhere right now, or the gentle word of encouragement from your partner.  The heart on a latte makes me happy every time, as do my cats’ wet nose snuggles, or feeling the soft and warm grass under my bare feet on a beautiful summer day.

 I try to train myself to notice these micro enjoyments and not take them for granted or rush past them.  We only exist in the moment, and if that moment is a pleasure to experience, it makes it all worthwhile.

global food combos

People are on the move more globally than ever before, travelling, emigrating, fleeing, or simply moving to a new place halfway across the world.  Our cultures are no longer homogenous, and food combinations reflect that mobility as well.  The melding of food cultures across borders is nothing particularly new as emigrants have always brought their traditions and recipes with them.  Catherine de Médicis jumpstarted French cuisine as we know it when she moved from Italy to France to become queen, and the Irish brought their soda bread, corned beef and cabbage with them across the ocean.  Pu pu platters and Tex-Mex dishes are more recent pop culture crossover foods, as is pineapple pizza.

Salad of Asian Napa cabbage, Italian radicchio and North African pomegranates

But now we're jumping much more crazily across the globe, and that produces zanier combos yet. Several years ago, we went to a high end Chinese- Peruvian restaurant, a food combination I was unable to imagine, but that turned out to have been one of the most amazing food experiences ever.  I regularly make hummus, the traditional Middle Eastern chickpea dip, with any legumes I have on hand, whether lentils, white, black or kidney beans - unconventional for Middle Easterners to say the least.  Hummus mixed with avocado is another recent combination that reaches all the way to Mexico from the Levant.  Quinoa and vegan sushi are newfangled New World interpretations of the Japanese raw fish and rice classic.  Asian flavors in general have infiltrated international cooking everywhere, and a dash of soy sauce in my French vinaigrette transports me to a place almost diametrically opposed on the globe.  Asian tofu has settled in for good in the Western world thanks to the spread of vegetarianism and veganism where it’s become a welcome and versatile protein addition.  

What zany cultural mixes happen in your kitchen?  You may have to think twice because we forget how globally we’re oriented.