Last week, I was making Martha Stewart’s Apricot-Dijon Chicken for one of our Rosh Hashanah meals. It’s a super simple recipe, and it’s sweet, which is traditional for this holiday, but I decided to tinker with it (Why? Why would I tinker with Martha Stewart?!) and add lemon juice for a little bit of acid to balance the sweet. Only when I squeezed the lemon, I discovered that there was a cut under my thumbnail - which immediately began to throb, and sting.
Have you ever had a little cut under your fingernail? Like a paper cut, or you press into something in a funny way and it breaks the skin under the nail just the tiniest bit, so that when you go to use your finger - or squeeze a lemon - it stings?
If that’s happened to you, then you know that once you disturb the little cut under the nail - once it starts to throb or sting - it’s very hard to make it stop. It just keeps hurting, and when the discomfort begins to ebb, you inevitably press on it again, or you try to open a jar, or you (heaven forbid) squeeze another lemon, and it starts to hurt all over again.
And suddenly it becomes next to impossible to not think about the pain.
Now, to be clear, the pain under my fingernail is a tiny pain in the scheme of pain and injury. Teeny tiny. And yet it still hurts.
Anybody who’s ever had pain of any kind knows that pain can be hard to ignore. It can take up enormous space in your brain. It can feel ever-present, and omni-present.
I would venture to say - this is my own hypothesis, but I feel fairly confident about it - that most people are walking through the world with some kind of pain. Maybe it’s a cut under the fingernail, maybe it’s a frozen shoulder, or another injury or illness - or maybe it’s worry, or grief.
The cut under my thumbnail is a silly example; it didn’t stop me from cooking or celebrating the holiday or going about my life, but it did make itself known each time I put any pressure on my right thumb - which was over and over again over the course of several days.
So much so that it got me thinking. Whatever pain we are carrying - whatever it is that weighs on our hearts or our minds, or under our fingernails - is hard to not think about. It’s also hard to remember, when the pain feels omni-present, that even though it might feel like it is, the pain is not all that there is.
There is also birdsong. And there are sunsets. There are hot showers and there’s Apricot-Dijon Chicken, and honey cake. There’s kindness, and warm laundry and there’s music on the radio.
And this, my friends, is why we practice.
Ps. I read this post to Dave tonight, as I was writing, and he reminded me of ▶this song, which I loved when I was fifteen.
Monday:
Queen Bee.
I dropped a jar in the kitchen today, and miraculously it did not break.
The plumber had an opening this afternoon, I was able to rearrange my day to be at home, they were able to replace the cracked pipe under the kitchen sink, and now we’re back in business.
Now you? Tell me 3 good things?
Xo.
