So, the other night, a gentle, lovely vegan whom I cherish made me dinner. Among the 273 dishes she just happened to casually whip up in our honor: Roasted duck. Pâté. And an egg-and-milk-happy Swedish cardamom cake.
It was, no doubt, the best duck of my life.
“But isn’t she a vegan?” my husband whispered as we waddled to our chariot.
“She is. And she’s firm in her beliefs. She just allows us our agnosticism.”
“But it was so good!”
“I know. She’s tragically gifted in that way.”
Most vegans would probably excoriate my sweet, svelte and never-hungry friend for cooking meat and — egads! duck liver — for her non-vegan pals, so I shan’t out her here. But Air Plant, as she shall henceforth be known, isn’t troubled by pesky things like labels and boxes and definitions. She sports lovely, frilly frocks in a town where nekkedness is nearly mandatory. She speaks Japanese. In Miami. She is a world traveler who has lived in the same stylish house for two decades, and she eschews all attempts to box herself into a corner.
Others I know, however, are hemmed in by their self-defined perimeters. Such fences make it easy to distance oneself from new experiences. Out of their mouths recently:
“I’m a mom. I don’t bellydance.”
“I have a job. I can’t just take off for two months to go study Mandarin in Shanghai.”
“I’m smart and bookish. This party town is beneath me.”
Many paths for you to choose or forge
This past weekend, I was white-knuckling the steering wheel on my way back from the farmer’s market. One of my dearest and most soulful friends and her baby were in the car, and as I sort of love them, I didn’t want to be responsible for any, you know, traffic-induced maiming.
But I nearly slammed on the breaks when Diana said this:
“Life is infinitely renewable.”
Yes. More, please.
“We tell ourselves we can’t do things, or that we’re too this or that to do or be them,” she said, edging a binky into her baby’s mouth. ”We’re wrong: you can always, always design and re-design your life.”
And that’s just her passenger brilliance; think of what she can do when not at the mercy of my inept driving.
I’ve spent a bit of time since then thinking about what limits I set on myself. How do define myself? What words do I use to describe myself? Do those words and definitions then lead me towards pigeon-holing?
One does not need to radically change one’s life on a daily basis, unless one is a drag queen with an astonishing variance of wigs. Or Jason Bourne. But it’s a good exercise, methinks, to ask ourselves if — and how — we limit our experiences, and whether that continues to serve us.
Here’s a jump-start to that thinking and writing process:
I ________ therefore I ___________.
I’m a ___________, so I can’t __________.
I want to _____________ but I’m ______________.
Because others see or know me as __________, I’m reluctant to __________________.
You might be surprised at the outcome. One woman I know — a fine cook herself – decided to start taking pole dancing classes. As her husband put it, “She comes back from pole dancing, fixes me an amazing dinner and I think, ‘It’s good to be me.’”
And even better, the wife now says, to be her.
Until tomorrow,
H
P.S. Subscribers received the name of the lovely, lovely wine our hosts served with the duck. Click on the left to subscribe. ;)
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Any chance of a recipe for that duck. You’ve made my mouth water here!
Trust me; I’ve already begged.
Who knew I loved the foul fowl? Magic.