On Love... The Rules and Regulations

Huh?

Someone on Facebook commented that they "loved" the food they’d created. One of their "friends" reprimanded her, telling her that you can’t "love" food. You love your lover and your family, but you can’t "love" food.

I wonder who died and put her in charge of love.

I don't know what that other person's motivation was for loving her food, but I'm going to respect her feelings.  See, I love my food too. I do.  I have auto-immune disease and can no longer have so many of the foods I grew up eating. They are simply off-limits. When I ate those old familiar foods, it wasn’t about love. It was about nourishment and getting on with things. Same old, same old, really. Oh, I enjoyed my food, but it just didn't loom large in my life.  And then came the day when food was about feeling sick.  

Since being denied the predictability of familiar foods, I’ve been on a journey of sorts, discovering different, speciality foods that I can have, learning about a greater range of foods from around the world to increase my options, and learning to create healthy, satisfying, delicious meals from them. This has often been a challenge with discoveries fraught with trial, error and failure. It’s also been a labour of love, since health and nourishment are important in life and deserve our attention and effort.  And I’m worth that effort. Do you not love yourself? If you don’t, you have a problem... particularly if you’re stuffing your face with unhealthy convenience foods.

And so, as with any challenge we might face in life, there’s a certain satisfaction that comes with mastering a skill. The failures teach us to appreciate all the more the successes, the sheer joy we feel from creating a culinary delight from few and different food choices. It’s a similar delight, satisfaction and gratification that comes with mastering a piece of music ~ a concerto on the piano, or a particularly difficult riff on a guitar ~ or creating a work of art, or growing that perfect orchid. Yes, Virginia, we LOVE the results because we worked hard and overcame much to realize them. Get over it.

I really don’t understand what makes people who have narrow parameters for everything tick, like those people who think those of us on special diets are doing it just to annoy or inconvenience them, or, yeah, those who think there are limitations to love.

What I do get is that there are many different kinds of love. The love one has for success after struggle. That love for simple things, like sunshine and twittering birds. The swelling of appreciation (a form of love) for that beautiful flower in the garden, and the sound of waves on the shore. And oh... all the musical groups I’ve loved... no, not physically. ;)  It doesn’t matter if it’s food, music, art, beauty or whatever... it’s love. I also love my friends, my dog, my cats and of course, last but certainly not least, and most obviously, my family.  I have room in my heart to love all of the beauty of life.

Simply put, life is all about love. If you don’t get that, and you have to set down rules and regulations about love, maybe you need to open your mind, and your heart.

Now.... here’s a meal I really love.

Then I have to do some planting, because man... I do love my garden.  It brings the birds, butterflies and bees and gives them food and a place to work, and yes, I love them too.

Falling into the Abyss ~ Earth (or parts of it) Down the Rabbit Hole

Facebook is changing again.

To some, this is a huge chunk of the cliff face falling off into the abyss. Some of us are clinging to that piece of rock, some are up top watching with fascination, and still others are below, watching in horror. All of us, Chicken Littles or no, will be convinced to some degree that the sky is falling... a disaster of dire social networking proportions. Oh fudge.

Of course, this is the age of communication. Yeah. It’s a time when we actually try to brain storm via the electronic media and wonder why the attempt isn’t quite satisfying. I mean, the fact remains, more than half of anything anyone is trying to convey to us is in their eyes, facial expression, tone, gestures, and general body language. Typed words, no matter how eloquent, do not completely convey the moment... unless you have Skype. Even then, it’s a little herky-jerky and not as reliable as the in-person meeting of the minds.

Ah, but it is nice to be able to keep in touch with friends and meet like-minded folk on Facebook. And it is annoying when the thing we’ve just gotten used to changes, again. It’s like the grocery store ~ just when you know where the products you use are located, they move them.

The social network inspires, amuses, informs and more. It makes us laugh. It sometimes infuriates us. Sometimes it does both at the same time. Like a natural disaster, it brings out the best and worst in people ~ even if we can’t see expression, or hear tone, and we actually have to tell people in words that we’re joking ~ something that apparently even winky guys don’t convey to some people. I mean, a fat lot of good it does to craft postings with great care, when they aren’t read with even similar care. People.

Ah yes, people. Those Earthly creatures who make over their gods into their own flawed images. A particular favourite of mine is the gun-totin’, ready-for-battle, dead set against peasants Jesus of American fame. The one who sure as hell isn’t going to humbly bend to bathe a beggar’s feet. This is the Jesus of those who keep their gun handy, right on top of their Bible. Of course, this isn’t the Jesus in the Bible, but apparently these people can ignore this in the fervour of their convictions.

Of course, what most people really worship, regardless of their protests to the contrary, is money. Yes, wealth and power, that’s the thing to have, preferably on the backs of millions of working-class heros who’ve been numbed into unknowing submissiveness with the very products of their industry, from fast foods to drugs. You know, like Walmart workers, many of whom qualify for food stamps while the corporate owners have become multi-millionaires. That’s the American Way, apparently. After all, the peasants will be too busy wondering why they’re so sick to notice the special status of the wealthy. But let’s be clear that I’m not painting every nation, or even every rich person, with the same wide brush. In the recent economic downturn, Iceland, for instance, punished its crooked bankers and helped its citizens whose futures had been compromised by corporate greed. It’s in America that they did the very opposite. American bankers were not punished. In fact, they were bailed out of their troubles by the government, with no penalty, while the people who suffered from the banks’ bad business practices have been left to founder on their own. No matter their contribution to their former jobs, their communities, or even to their country, they are left to struggle along without any "bail out," many community services, including schools broke and without the wherewithall to provide the services needed. These are schools without books, or in some cases, even teachers... too many for even Ellen DeGeneres to save. In fact, those people who have dared to accept government help of any kind are soundly denigrated by other Americans, particularly the ones with the gun-belt Jesus.... and all the money.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lKwXwU5iWs Working Class Hero, John Lennon

Oh well, as difficult as it is to watch the fall of the American empire, there’s nothing most of us can do about it, even though many Americans are armed to the teeth, and Canadians have their strongly-worded letters and blog posts. Fact remains, we’re all just visiting this planet, and we can’t take wealth with us when we go. Not a problem when it’s in the hands of so few, I guess. Although, I’ll bet some of those hearses will have luggage racks. Never say die and all that.

And this brings us to time. I mean, we do all run out of that at some point. And of course, time is money. Thing is, time is also an illusion ~ a warping of sidereal space by a mass that bends it. And on that mass, aka Earth, in this ungracious age, time is apparently a more precious commodity than kindness to so many. Like that rabbit in the story of Alice in Wonderland, who runs around with his clock in his hand saying, "No time...no time... I’m late, I’m late...." That’s who many humans have become in the quest for .... um... well, whatever that is they’re hurrying for. I mean, we’re all headed for the same fate, so sometimes I wonder why we’re running. But I guess some people are hurrying in their quest for.... um... wealth? They hurry so much toward the future they want, that they never notice, much less enjoy, the present. And of course, the present is all there actually is.

And this brings us back to Facebook, where people have time to schmooze, unless they’re busy trying to figure out the inevitable changes. It’s kind of too bad we can’t actually sell our Facebook time for money. Then we’d all have a little of that much-coveted wealth, though it would cost us our present, and even our future. Moreover, I just don’t know what we’d do with that wealth while we’re clinging to that chunk of rock falling into the abyss. Earth down the rabbit hole. Look out belooooowwww.