I almost knocked over a serving spoon; which in turn would have tripped over another pot, throwing over something else, and ensue a series leading to many unfortunate events. On this particular day, I stopped it all just then, and that’s how this lesson came to me. Pay attention. watch and notice, as you do. The place where you are, is here. And so, you must make more of an effort to be here.
I am not one to keep a messy kitchen. Even as I cook I clean. even on that particular day. Up until an hour or so, my kitchen was such that pots and spoons would not go flying over each other. But then it was not. My mind had wandered over a detail that does not come back to me now, taking me away from what I should have been tending to. My mind wonders often. What does not come familiarily to me, is taking notice of what is. Not really. Mindfulness for me is something I have to cultivate. By that I mean, my mind is a world on its own, carrying echoes of words and thoughts that have been and are yet to be, shifting me from being here, to there and there.
And so, as I cook, I have been demanded of to be where I am. Asking that I curve out time, and prepare. and then be present to notice it all unfold. It’s a difficult thing, presence. I find that the not-now serves a lot more promise; things you can look back at and know to do better, promises of futures that are a lot more inspired, and other such things. There is ritual I have found behind this kind of work, and these lessons will gently, and firmly demand my commitment in turn. I give it, because sometimes dicing the onion allows me to pay attention long enough to recognise the voice that pops into my head.
As I get back into the habit of peeling my own tomatoes and waiting to stir soup as it boils, I have been reminded of the practices that allow us tend to oneself, and others. It feels familiar. We have always cooked, sometimes in service to each other. It stirs feelings of being fed, nourished and a part of something. It is a tending of sorts.
Tending to yourself is not a practice that comes easily to most of us. The habit of extending to yourself care and comfort seems almost luxurious. It is so easy to not have the time, or forget to, and how. So much of what seems to characterise who we are is not having the spaciousness to do such business anymore. Our worlds moving far too fast, demanding of our bodies urgency, leaving hardly the time to notice or to care enough to tend. It is also such a precarious thing to care. We are after-all in a state of perpetual moral and otherwise injury, and have the scars to show. We have many reasons why we shouldn’t or cannot. But what if we could tend to what we love, as much as we confront what we don’t? Would that leave us with a lot more tenderness to share and spread? What will sustain us then, in the cold brutality of the world we sometimes have to inhabit if not that we care enough about what happens to each of us?
Perhaps. We can leave that door open at least.
I have convinced myself that where we are now is a prelude. Something else has to emerge, but what, I do not dare say. What I know, is that much like writing, in this way, cooking, has been returning back to me. I suppose it is not so much as returning, as it is, being beckoned and choosing to answer. They both feel…not new, and the silence I surround myself in the practice of allow me to sit and consort with my self.
It is that that leads us to where we are now. You reading this; and me going on about cooking, but not actually cooking, writing nonetheless. How I want to leave you, is with the questions that stay with me.
We started with being here. But here is well, here. Marred by all that has come to shape what we know life, and each other to be. How then do we tenderly carry our hearts and lather our bodies in what allows that we stay and notice. Perhaps, through the practices of tending. by caring enough for myself, and you, sometimes through rituals that are not foreign, the answers can return. Or maybe they will not, and we will only have remembered how to hold each other. Perhaps then, the tending and noticing is only to remind each other of who we are. more. deserving. worthy. here.