there is no perfect place on earth

After having lived in many different places my father came to the conclusion that there is no perfect place on earth, but that you can create that perfect place in and out of yourself, or something to that effect.

I, too, have lived in many countries and agree with my dad. I love France, I grew up there, the food is great, the culture is great, the country's geography and history are great. Yet, it's a very bureaucratic and stifling country to do business in, and many young entrepreneurs have left for England or the US, the better to unfold their creative potential. I love this country, its fabulous natural sights, the ease of doing business, the diversity that comes with being a cultural melting pot, and New York City is, despite its ugliness (Paris is a lot more beautiful, and London and Berlin are a lot greener), one of the most exciting cities in the world. Yet, I find the constant emphasis on productivity and ROI at the expense of at least some quality of life tiring in the long run, and let's not even get into some of the politics. And so it goes with every place.

All that, however, is no reason to become depressed.   On the contrary, it's a lesson. There is no perfection on earth, otherwise it would be heaven (or something like that). But we can create our personal slice of heaven right here. And that comes from our attitude and how we position ourselves. You do that by surrounding yourself with people and things that make it perfect for you, you spend time in places that resonate with you, and you do things that fulfill you.   Forget about criticizing your neighbor for this, your job for that, and your country for yet another things. Contentment comes from within.

break/brake for lunch

I realize that many of my posts are about slowing down and being more mindful. That's because our lives have become so incredibly fast and overscheduled in the name of profitability. So here goes another one. Taking the time to eat slowly, especially at lunch time, and enjoying your meal goes a long way. Not only do you truly taste what you eat, even savor it, it also helps to keep your weight in check and aids the digestion, and then some. How so?

When you wolf down food quickly to get it over with and get on with the next task the brain doesn't have time to keep up with what's going on in the stomach, there is a communication delay. It actually takes the stomach about ten minutes to communicate to the brain that it has had enough to eat. Eating slowly permits mind and body (or mind and stomach) to remain in sync; when you eat too fast the stomach (and eyes and taste buds) get ahead of the mind and gobble up more than you need to feel satisfied. Hence, eating too fast can lead to weight gain.  In addition, slowing down and chewing longer not only predigests the food and helps the body to assimilate the nutrients much better, it also aids the digestive process.  And lastly, what about actually enjoying and savoring what you put into your mouth? May as well, since it's more pleasurable.

Slowing down for lunch during a hectic day - I know, "sometimes it's just not practical," you'll say - helps to refocus your attention from the scatteredness of multi-tasking back to one specific thing.  It powers you down, gives you time to realign with yourself, and regroup for a more productive afternoon.

my cup of tea

I am not a coffee person, at least not most of the time (I do enjoy an espresso after a big meal, but that's just about as far as my coffee love goes). Especially early in the morning coffee tastes harsh to me and I like to wake up gently and ease myself into the day. And no, I'm not an herbal tea kind of a person, barely even a green tea person. Those don't have enough oomph for me. I like my tea black and strong, forget the teabags. Assam, English or Irish Breakfast and such, Earl Grey, too, but more in the afternoon or evening than earlier in the day. I buy my tea in bulk and hang a special canvas tea brewing bag with a generous amount of tea into my pot and let it steep to a deep dark color that looks almost like coffee. Tea is a comfort beverage for me. I drink it all day long, always with milk, no sugar.  In the morning I make a big pot full and warm up cup after cup throughout the day. When we go away to someplace with a kitchen I bring my whole tea paraphernalia with me, and I miss it dearly when we go on vacation and I can only get teabag tea. When we moved recently the tea supplies went into a carton marked "Open First," like a first aid kit.

Although this post is more about the emotional benefits of having a "nice cup of tea," black tea incidentally has all sorts of health benefits, such as promoting heart health, lessening type 2 diabetes risk, and its potent antioxidants are anti-inflammatory and supposedly counter visible aging effects. A good cup of strong tea makes everything "all better" for me.  But most of all tea for me is about slowing down, while coffee is for speeding up.

lousy emotional reactions

"How other people react is their karma, how you react is your's," my yoga teacher said a while ago. When the supermarket cashier is grumpy or the boutique salesperson is curt I find it unpleasant and it makes me uncomfortable. When someone is angry I tend to take it personally and think the anger is directed at me. Most of us react that way. But it helps to put emotional reactions into perspective.

Imagine your boss just reprimanded you for submitting your report late. When you step out of that office you feel pretty lousy and might snap at the first person that comes along. Remember, though, the one who feels lousy is you, not your coworker who happens to walk down the hallway. If you snap at your coworker she probably thinks that she did something wrong, when instead something happened to you. See how intertwined we are?

It helps so much to be aware of our emotional reactions in order to diffuse them before they cause damage. How about taking a few deep breaths, going to the bathroom or the coffee station for a brief break, or being honest with your coworker and saying "My boss just chewed me out and I kind of feel lousy right now, do you want to have a cup of coffee with me?"

So back to the top. You can quickly and easily do a whole lot of damage with a crappy reaction, or you can choose to prevent a whole lot of damage by diffusing negative emotions.

a stack of magazines

Ron Lieber recently wrote about enjoying such simple pleasures as going to the library and losing yourself in a stack of magazines. I mostly read non-fiction, whether newspaper, non-fiction or creative non-fiction books about my favorite subjects, although I'll read a rare novel here and there (the DaVinci Code is on my list). Total unwinding for me is sitting down in a quiet room with a stack of magazines and endless time with no scheduled events on the horizon, and perhaps a cup of tea or a glass of wine. Every few months, and before we go on vacation, I go to the library to get a big stack of magazines. And then I'll hole up in bed or on the couch and disappear relishing my (somewhat) brainless browsing through pretty pictures and snipets and tidbits of text.

It gives me great visual pleasure to leaf through the aesthetically pleasing Martha Stewart magazines and oohhh and aahh at the beautiful photographs of clever ideas and sumptuous spreads, as unpractical and time consuming as the making of all these beautiful crafts, decors and dishes may in reality be. And reading about people instead of ideas is relaxing to the mind as well.

Entertainment and relaxation don't always have to cost an arm and a leg.  What simple pleasures do you enjoy?

scarcity is a state of mind

In nature abundance is everywhere. Whether you look at the grass patch in front of your house (soooo many grass blades), the sand on the beach (soooo many grains of sand), the stream in the woods (soooo many water droplets), or your neighbor's apple tree (how many apple seeds on one tree?  imagine all the new apple trees that could be grown from all those seeds), or the stars in the night sky - nature's abundance is limitless. If nature is so abundant, then scarcity (as in "I don't have enough money," or "I don't have any friends," or "I have to hurry, otherwise they'll run out of fill-in-the-blanks)" is a fabricated state of mind.  Our mind is all powerful, and it influences how we see our world - and, yes, everyone inhabits their own version of the world. Since we exist in a continuous energy exchange with our surroundings the universe reflects back to us what we put out. If you keep looking out for lack, you will see lack reflected back to you. If you put out abundance, the universe reflects all that abundance out there back to you.

apple tree

You may have heard of gratefulness journaling, writing down moments of gratefulness during the day in order to become more content. In a similar way you can train yourself to become more aware of abundance in order to promote more abundance in your life in general.  Be aware that writing things down is more powerful than just thinking them because this crystalizes your thoughts, it brings you one step closer to actual manifestation. So writing down when you become aware of abundance helps to set this thinking into your mind. Notice the abundance of sunshine outside, the abundance of air, the abundance of bees, of carrots at the market, of cells in your body, of delicious moments in your life - imagine away and feel yourself expand.

whatever happened to that breadbox?

When I came to this country in the early 1980s I was surprised to find that people stored their bread in the refrigerator, and that people's refrigerators were huge compared to the ones I was used to from Europe.

Oddly enough, despite our technical ability and being able to afford to refrigerate so much more than formerly we still waste lots of food.  But food waste and spoilage nowadays happen at the end of our food's journey, right in our own backyard, aka refrigerator.

In a recent NY Times article Dartmouth professor Susan Freidberg wrote that surprisingly all that expensive refrigeration doesn't necessarily reduce food waste, it merely shifts where the food waste occurs.

In former times most food spoilage happened between harvest and sale because the lack of refrigeration rotted some of the produce and meat before it ever got to the consumer.  We live in such overabundance and tend to buy more than we can realistically consume, lulled by the belief that it'll keep - and then it won't. Things also have a tendency to disappear in our large fridges, and when you finally find that piece of cheese, that yogurt or slice of ham- low and behold it has grown mold or is way beyond its prime. I am certainly guilty of that. Recently, I ended up with three open salsa jars (not sure how that happened), one of which became moldy before we finally discovered it. I also have three big packages of blanched beet greens in the freezer. Every time I open the freezer they say "hello" to me as I rediscover them, and they remind me that I should cook them up instead of "storing" them in the freezer forever (well, at least they won't go bad).

DSC07215

We could save on all fronts, refrigerator size, energy consumption, and food quantities purchased, if we became more aware of our habits and realistic needs. After all, bread can go into the breadbox, jam in the pantry, the pretty red peppers on the table, and maybe we'll use them up quicker if we see them around instead of hiding them in that icebox.

oh, those late summer tomatoes

There is nothing better than a sweet tree ripened peach, a sun ripened soft and warm tomato that's just been plucked, or springy and perky greens that were harvested in the early morning hours before the sun comes up.  Just harvested produce that has sun ripened to perfection has so much life force. You can taste all the minerals and sunny goodness.

We lose those characteristics when we buy produce at the supermarket. Supermarket produce gets harvested before it ripens so it can be transported safely over long distances and is "ready" when it finally arrives at the store. That works more or less well for some produce types but not for others. Bananas and tomatoes can be harvested while still green and will keep ripening on the window sill, although they will not acquire that natural sun ripened sweetness. A hard supermarket peach or plum, on the other hand, will never get that juicily delicious sweet taste a sun ripened fruit naturally has - the peaches usually turn mealy and the plums stay sourish.

That's why it is so rewarding to buy produce locally when it is in season. So what if you can only have strawberries in June and July? The local kind tastes ten times better than the spongy clamshell strawberries that come from far away year round. In Germany there is the annual spring asparagus craze that lasts for about six weeks when the fat white stalks are ready. Here, I love the fat juicy tomatoes that are at their best in late August and early September when the sun has had enough time to deepen their color to a profound red and they almost taste as sweet as candy. Now is the time for gazpacho, the chilled Spanish soup made from superripe tomatoes (no tomato juice!), cucumbers, peppers, a little garlic, a little vinegar; bruschetta, the Italian appetizer of cubed tomatoes with a bit of basil, served on toasted slices of garlic rubbed country bread; caprese, the Italian appetizer of alternating slices of ripe tomatoes and the best mozzarella you can find, basil, some good olive oil and balsamic vinegar, or the Tex-Mex saladof leftover barbecued corn, red onions, tomatoes and lots of cilantro with a balsamic vinaigrette.

routine, glorious routine

Children are getting bored (although they say they love summer vacation and hate school), parents are getting antsy. Summer is waning, the local tomatoes don't get any better than this, it is high pesto time, and we are approaching Labor Day fast. Schools have sent out supply lists, the children are relishing their last days of endless sleep, laziness and boredom, and we, the parents, are enjoying the last days of no-school-routine.

During the summer months bedtime was undefined and breakfast on your own, beds remained unmade, dinner was late, my yoga routine went bye-bye, and work came and went in spurts for me, unorganized and interrupted.

It is time to revert back to our school day routines. For me that means getting up early to make school lunches for my teens, having a sit-down family breakfast, tidying the house and making the beds before going about my work in peace and quiet and one long undisturbed stretch until the afternoon, putting on lipstick every morning, organizing after-school activities, cooking dinner every night, and making sure there is a bedtime.

We need the looseness of summer to enjoy the rigor and organization of the rest of the year, and vice versa. They complement each other in a yin yang kind of way the way week-end vs. week day routines do (see an earlier post on that).

receiving graciously

In a way we all want to be loved and accepted and patted on the back for it. But being a supposed goody two-shoes and feeling guilty about accepting a present is misconstrued.

A while ago we gave a friend's daughter a money gift upon her graduation and received a thank-you card back with an added note saying "you didn't have to do that." I know that phrase. I have heard it often among family members and it circulates widely. A few years ago I was playing money tag with my housekeeper. I paid her, she gave me some money back because she thought she had worked less than what I paid her for, but then I stuck the money back into her purse wanting to be generous. She finally put an end to our money tag and said something like "You need to let people give to you." The Japanese have the complicated social custom of giri, a kind of reciprocal indebtedness incurred when giving a larger present.

Think about the feelings that come up for you when you get a present versus when you give a present, especially one that you have selected particularly carefully or that took a long time to create. Oftentimes, I get more of a charge out of giving and seeing the surprise and pleasure on the receiver's face than receiving. But that twisted fact makes us so mutually intertwined that we need to become as gracious a receiver as being a gracious giver. Let others give to you and relish receiving.