Do you remember this scene from City Slickers:
"Curly: You know what the secret of life is?
Mitch: No, what?
Curly: This.
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don't mean shit.
Mitch: That's great, but what's the one thing?
Curly: That's what you've got to figure out."
I've thought about these lines since I first saw that movie almost two decades ago. Believing at first that it was profound advice, but now I believe that old man was full of crap. How can you go through life just concentrating on one thing? I mean, aren't we supposed to be well rounded?
I like the challenge though of concentrating on one thing; it's the process –the evolution– of becoming really good at something. With cooking the end result, of course, is as important as the process. We want the food to taste good. I can understand how a person can become passionate about cooking, dedicating his/her life to just this one thing. I'm not one of those people.
If I concentrated only on cooking, who would clean the toilets, mop the floors, do the wash, the groceries ... run the business? Not to mention, how boring would that be? I mean after a certain amount of years doing one thing, you should be able to master the one thing and move on to another. Shouldn't you? Yet, we have to eat every day. Oh what a paradox!
I believe I may come to master a particular dish or two; for everything else I'll keep trying.
This is the moving that was playing on HBO the night we waited for "Andrew". I wish I forget not one thing but a few things but then I would become Mother.
ReplyDeleteThe one thing we should all stick to is to do the best that we can with what we have at the time we have it. Like "mama" used to say in 'Forest Gump': "Forest, life is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you're gonna have". In the meantime, I'll have a chocolate from my very own box... Hugs & kisses.
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