Table Discussions on Food, Love, and Health
A cook is an improv artist. A baker is a chemist.
A cook works without a blueprint. She feels her craft come from inside of her. It is a response to her environment, the people she will feed, the ingredients presented forth by nature or by circumstance.
A baker needs her implements. She is precise and exact. She uses recipes, measurements, and rules. Every ingredient needs to be accounted for, ready, just so.
For ten days after Rosh HaShana we have a period known in Hebrew as עשרת ימי תשובה and means ten days of reconciliation, sometimes also translated as ten days of repentance. These days are intended for doing deep emotional work and taking spiritual inventory in our lives and in our relationships. It’s a bit like making New Year’s Resolutions, and perhaps a bit more like closing the books on an accounting period in an organization. We take stock. Who(m) have we hurt? How have we disappointed ourselves? What opportunities and experiences have we denied ourselves because we were too busy or too afraid? And what do we want to change? In a way, when I was going through Seth Godin’s altMBA, I was forced to do a lot of this, but harder. Deeper, more honest work. Harder intention setting. More rigorous assessment of am I taking the steps to achieve those intentions. It was all somehow familiar. And yet oh, so scary.
Dance with fear.
—Seth Godin, creator of the altMBA
