Variations on a theme can open up possibility Day 780

Yesterday I was in my local farmer’s market. I was talking with a man who is also, in the winter, a doctor. We were talking about making pesto. Pesto is basically a mixture of greens and nuts and an oil made into a paste. 

A woman comes up, who I know to be a teacher, and says, that she can’t see pesto being made with anything other than basil and pine nuts, she said that the flavors would not be the same.  The doctor and I look at one another and move to explain that pesto can be made with many different greens and nuts. For example, one can make a paste with nettle and cashews.  I then went to say that in any area in the world, using local plants and nuts, people have made pastes and salsa like mixtures using local indigenous things for as long as human record and memory has brought forward.  Even a stew is made from local things. It is all mixtures in varying forms.  I mean what is a ‘ mole’ but a paste made from chocolate beans, or seeds etc. What is tahini but a paste made from sesame seeds. 

The woman blinked her eyes and became quiet. She was processing all this practical perspective.  

I looked at her and said, “ can you see how we lose our own creative and critical thinking when we believe that one thing is how things should be, despite what is right in front of us? Silence. I did not expect anything less, it was a moment where I realized I would get no answer. It was to only open up perspective in as gentle a way as possible.  I sometimes do that, and have had that done to me. At the moment, I can say something like,  “ I never looked at it that way, duh!” I can even laugh at my own limitation, and enjoy the exposure of my own ignorance because it opens things up. It is a moment of realization or seeing, and obvious self capacity to understand which is actually very cool. It means that I can see.  It also opens up possibility. And, it also begs the question; “ where else in my world have I done this!?” 

It was one of those moments, a tiny anecdotal movement comes forward that can expose how stuck we can become, and the endless possibilities that are all around us in every moment if we only step out of belief and realize the many forms of creation available to us that are always here. 

Cultural icons are cool things, they can teach us about the world if we look at them in common sense of how they fit into this reality and the natural environment from which they came. They define and yet are not fixed at the same time. They tell a story about a place and a time, which can be used, as a form, to understand the greater whole. This, in effect, can teach us about the greater whole. How cool is that?