The Spice & Substance Of Life
We say that variety is the spice of life. That adding in variety is what keeps things interesting. That we need the freshness and novelty to survive. To stay engaged with our world. And we believe it, following blindly. Because we are all so afraid of getting bored.
Some of us take it further than the rest. We seek out things that thrill us, and we have a hard time settling into a routine. A week or two of the same makes us restless. It’s like our very soul gets itchy and we cannot satisfyingly scratch it until we’ve found something that feels new.
But, what is spice supposed to be anyway? In cooking, spice is something you add to enhance the flavor. A pinch of this or a dash of that. Something extra that will bring distinct elements of your meal to life in different ways. Exactly how much spice we add depends on our preferences and what we’ve got in the pan.
That’s the catch though. There has to be something in the pan for us to spice. Some significant or substantial thing that is enough on it’s own to sustain us. The real meat and potatoes of it all, so to speak. You cannot simmer chili powder and cumin alone. And you cannot consume enough calories in a day if all you are eating is lemon pepper.
It turns out that spice, is not enough. We need something quite a bit stronger to fuel us. Something that packs a lot more energy inside than its garnish.
Like them or not, you can survive on unseasoned potatoes and boiled chicken. They might be bland or flavorless. But that’s a complete meal, all on its own. A salad doesn’t actually need herbed croutons for a bit of crunch, and it’s entirely edible without dressing. It might not be the kind of meal that makes your tastebuds light up, but it’s a meal that serves it’s purpose.
Even if the flavor is boring, it’s the non-seasoning ingredients in the pan that make it all into a meal. The contents of the pinch bowls are your paints and the utensils are your brushes. But you cannot create a culinary masterpiece without the blank canvas.
In the kitchen, it’s no secret that you can over-spice a dish. You can add too many dashes of extra. You can ruin the balance and destroy the flavor. It’s entirely possible that you can take things too far and make your meal inedible. Because spice cannot be the base of any dish. Spice alone is not enough to be our sustenance.
It’s our routines that make up our substance. It’s our boring and mundane, our everyday plain-milk moments that provide us with so much more than we may realize. They’re our home and our security blankets. They’re our familiar that we always come back to when we need comfort.
Whenever I’m embracing change, it’s my routines that bring confidence. Through the comfort of familiar, I find space for the newness to fit. It’s how I navigate settling when I’m unsettled. It’s the same when I travel. The locations might be unfamiliar, but the day is not. I’ll find time in the day for it to still hold all the moments I need to feel grounded.
When I feel like my days have been all mundane and vanilla, my soul gets itchy for spice too. But my heart knows that a little will probably be enough. I know I don’t need to decide never to eat chicken or potatoes again. Maybe I should just try adding in a drizzle of hot honey and a sprinkle of red pepper flakes one night instead. That might be all the meal needs to feel new to my pallet.
If you read enough stories about the best athletes in the world, you’ll find that they pretty much all have one thing in common. The people who become the best in the world at what they do are all people who can handle the boredom of their craft. They spend countless hours of their time over years and years showing up anyway, while their motivation ebbs and flows. It turns out that the secret to success is the exact opposite of exciting.
Maybe this year you decided that you wanted to get better at something, and maybe it isn’t going how you expected. Maybe you had a hard time figuring out your new routine and you aren’t where you wanted to be by now. Or maybe you succeeded in your first month of your new habit, but now you’re feeling your motivation slip away. You’re not failing.
Change is hard, and routines get boring. We are creatures of habit while being creatures who crave novelty. And for better or worse, we are all walking oxymorons trying to figure out our own balanced recipes as we go. It turns out that getting better at something is a lot like cooking though. You just need to figure out your base recipe, creating your routines and habits. Then you need to discover how much spice keeps it interesting for you.
Author’s note: One of my goals this year is to find my way back to consistency on this little blog of mine. Back to publishing something new every Tuesday. That didn’t happen how I pictured it would this first month of this new year. So instead, please enjoy this first of four days in a row of resolution(ish)-themed content to close out January. I hope to greet you again with consistency, beginning on February 7th.
