Measuring Life: One Pie at a Time

Living life, one slice of pie at a time.

Pie, what a delightful word and even better to eat. The scent of freshly baked pie, the aroma tickling your nose in the right spots! Ah, the sweet scent just wafting through your home, just what you need on a Sunday winter morning.

You look pleased with the result of your experiment. What was it that you decided to bake? Apple Pie? Was it Blueberry perhaps? You hum a melody long forgotten absentmindedly and a short giggle escapes your lips. This is where you remember you wanted to bake an apple pie, but the scent floating through is blueberry. You sigh and plunge a toothpick through the center to see if it comes clean. Lucky for you, it does.

You let the pie cool down while you look towards your kitchen and wonder where to begin cleaning. You decide, one way to do it is to have music on. Sure, you muse, music makes work easier, but does it hit the right spot as good as a pie? No, you decide. Just as you start cleaning, you look at the pie and can’t help but think how similar life and pie are. Of course, life does not come with instructions, on how to live, but a pie does, you think. You start off with something in mind, but halfway through you realise that you forgot to bring the essential ingredient that makes your pie a pie. But something else hits you, you know there is something else that can help bake a pie and carry on. In the process of baking a pie, you now know that you would have to clean up your own mess and then chastise yourself for not being careful, you decide not to create a mess this huge again.

Of course, in life there will be some hits and misses, like pie that does not rise all the time. You make fresh mistakes in the process of baking and learning about life. You could end up burning the crust, you pie could end up being flat, having too much egg. There will be times where you have to throw out the pie and start all over again, just like life. When one idea does not work, you decide you try another plan, but this time you learn from your mistakes and modify your plans. Just like the blueberry pie you baked.

Just as you finish cleaning up, your pie has now cooled down. You bring a fork with you and set out to dig in. Just as you are about to do so, you see another hand reach out waiting for you to begin. You smile and gladly oblige and tuck in. This is when it hits you, life, like pie is sweeter when shared. You reach to the conclusion that you would live life, one pie a day.

Life Lesson for July 2019

Well Po, you certainly did teach me a lot this month.

July has been an intense month, in terms of emotions and I have been tested, like never before. In June, I wrote about releasing my emotions and freeing myself from what I felt. This month has been more about working through my past and learning to forgive myself and most importantly just learning to be gentle with myself and giving myself more time grieve, but not losing myself to grief or getting hung up on the words spoken said in anger and unable to say anything in return and learning to let go at the caustic words spat out.

So this month, my takeaway was to let go of the past and the people who hurt me, in a way to show that I have boundaries, even if it means not responding to them via a phone call or a text. It also means that every time I have the urge to reach out and apologise, I will not because only I know how toxic and detrimental they have been to my emotional health.

I have also learnt that it okay to embrace my shades of grey seeing as I am neither pure black nor white, but a result of the two being mixed to give grey. Just like the rain clouds that threaten to burst open at the slightest provocation, but also the same clouds who promise the sun’s face once they depart. Slowly but surely, I have learnt to stabilize my sense of being and just accepting where I am in life and fighting when I deem fit, only to expend my energy when I feel safe and to understand that not everyone understands that I need my own space.

This month has taught me to honour all emotions I have felt, freely and purposefully and intensely and be completely alright with it, seeing as I am only human and that I am NOT an ideal version of someone’s best friend, sister or daughter. It has been immensely cathartic and freeing to not live up to the “perfect” version of me and I am okay with it. I need to happy with my imperfections and that is what makes me who I am. July has been a month of growth, on handling rejection and also coming in terms to accept my feelings, just as they are. No justifications required, no explanations necessary and above all else, my peace, mental and emotional returned. Simply because I let go of the past that I will no longer let dictate my future.

What has the month of July taught you? Comment below and let me know.

Measuring Life-One Pizza Slice at a Time

The Awkward Yeti is dope, just saying.

This is my second blog with a food title in it, by now I figure, what is life without food? Food is one thing that creates connections among people, food is where people bond (only second to alcohol) but PIZZA is one comfort food you can never go wrong with. But you know, not many (like me) think when they order pizza. They just wing it when they customise it or they just go with what is a ready option. But I find that life is really like the food we choose, the choices we make with the kind of food we prefer and if you are someone who likes pineapple on your pizza, you are about to get judged so hard. No jokes, really.

But that is what life is, if you really think of it, in terms of a pizza slice. Seemingly simple, but if you put in enough thought in customizing pizza, can be just as delicious and well, worth living. In saying that, not everything you add as an extra topping for your pizza will always turn out to be the best option or give you the taste you are after, that is how life is. Not every step you take with thought will give you the desired results. Sometimes you need to go the old fashioned boring way of doing things and life seems to approve of that too. Having said that, when you decide to add on extra to your pizza, how much thought do you put in the process, think of all the flavors and topping s that will go with the pizza sauce, what will compliment the base you have chosen, the kind of cheese you would like to be sprinkled or do you just wing it?

If you decide to wing it, how often do those decisions you made, without thought work out best in your favor? If you choose to think about all the choices you make and then take decisive action, do things fall into place just as simply? When I sat to pen this down on paper, with this piece of writing, a lot of realizations came home. Something as simple as ordering a pizza made me ponder as to how similar living life and eating pizza are so alike.

Life is like baking a pizza, deceptively simple, yet ask the ones who knead the dough. They know how difficult and time consuming it can be to get the desired results and the consistency required for a pizza base to come life once put in the oven. The sauces you choose, the toppings you take are yours and unique only to you.

No one really knows how difficult or easy another’s life is. The decisions we make, the choices we have, the weight on our shoulders, no one can really fathom how much we undergo and yet we get questioned for the tough calls, just like people ask, “why did you have to choose pepperoni? It would have been better with salami.” Funny thing is, we get someone else involved in making our pizza too, because we end up sharing it. Just like life. We share our pizza because we want people close to us to know we love them enough to share our beloved comfort food. We share details of our life only because we want someone we are close, to be to in the loop, to let them know we care enough to share.

Why do we then look down on the hard decisions taken, all the unkind comments we make as to how one is supposed to live? If someone likes pizza without the extra toppings, who are we to add anything more? Who are we to give “expert advice” to someone wanting to live a normal, simple existence? Life is much like a slice of pizza. Personal preferences seem to be topping the list and it would probably work better if we kept a tight restraint on wanting to mouth off as to how someone else to be living their life, just like ordering a pizza.

Next time perhaps when you order pizza from your favorite food place, consider how you decide your extras, how you would like your pizza and keep in mind how someone you love would like it too. Perhaps if we lived one pizza slice at a time, the world would be a slightly better place to live, where people are kinder, some if not all actions lovely and just easier to breath knowing you have made life a bit smoother by not judging the kind of life people you love choose to live.

Measuring Life with sips of tea

It’s tea time!

If you had to measure life, how would you do it? Would you measure life with something you love? If you had to measure life with sips of tea, how would you compare tea to the way you live your life?

You see, that’s the thing with life. You can see if as half empty or full, just like a glass of water. But here I am talking about tea and life. Why, you ask? If I had to talk about life as a glass of water, two things will happen: 1) I would have to refill too quickly and 2) I would be running to the washroom time and again. Life would be no fun if I had to run back and forth between the washroom and bedroom, now would it?

Pick a tea, any kind of tea- it could be herbal, green or just regular milk tea. What do you do when tea is ready? Just gulp it down (if you do, hats off to you!) or do you take your time to savor every sip, maybe throw in a cookie or two, just to add a little more taste to your chosen beverage?

What if I told you that you could also measure life with the number of sips you take? Would you then be careful then as to how you live life? For instance, if you chose to have your tea in a small cup, would you take equally small sips in order to breathe in the aroma and relish the taste by swirling the tea in your mouth? Or would you rather have a large mug of tea and chug it all in one go, not understanding the character of how the tea has been brewed? Just like life. If you do not take time to understand how your character has been developed through the sheer pressure that life has imposed on you, do you think you would have appreciated life more?

If the quality of life you lived was determined by the tea sips that you took, would you then slow down and smell the roses, smile at people more often and be a bit more kind? Would you judge less then, love more, if you just took a backseat and consumed life at the rate at which you finish your cup of tea? What if the life you lived reflected in the water you put to boil and the tea leaves brewed told you that you are indeed living a wasted life, a life where you judged too harshly, speak impolitely and leave nothing but discord and chaos in your wake? Would you live a little better, be a bit kinder and maybe use your speech sparingly, to encourage others and not bring them down instead?

Would you look at life differently, now that you know life can be compared to the tea you brew, the beverage you smell and the leaves once roasted? Would you live life a bit differently, be a little open and just love unconditionally? Will the life you choose to live here on out be slightly unaligned to the one you were used to living if you choose to compare it to the kind of tea you drink?

Here is to you and the next time you make a cup of tea, try measuring life while you are at it.