julia and julia. come dine with me. masterchef. nigella bites.
i finally succumbed to pop culture and decided to cook dinner for myself last night. normally, i allow my roommate (who has an unrivaled talent in the kitchen) to take care of my nourishment. however, the accumulation of nigella’s provocative language, the visual richness of the process of cooking and my desire to be creative finally seduced me to step foot in the kitchen, using it as my canvas to create something totally fresh and unique.
well my fantastical notions of me whipping up a masterpiece in the kitchen were quickly extinguished. instead of expertly chopping the vegetables at a captivatingly rapid rate, sensually mixing the ingredient, inhaling their alluring aromas and coo-ing with pleasure after each intermittent taste on the mixing spoon, i found myself standing in the middle of my modern kitchen, completely at a loss.
what was my problem? i certainly knew enough about cooking and the kitchen to ensure that i wasn’t going to burn the place down or poison myself. but for some reason i still felt.. panicked.
my helplessness in the kitchen last night illuminated my intense need for instruction. i rarely go by instinct, instead favouring being told what to do and how to do it. when left to my own devices, i panic and stress that i will do something wrong and.. i dont know.. the world will end? i will ruin everything?? such an irration and crippling problem.
my need for instruction is even evident in my study choices. i crave the certaintly of maths. this widely hated subject was among my favourites at school. i craved the security of having a clear right answer, and knowing how to get it. my success in mathematics was a constant in my education, something i could rely on to give me some self-validation.
english, on the otherhand, was a complete different story. my marks would fluctuate dramatically each year, causing me to have a very strained relationship with it. i always felt insecure expressing my opinions and stringing my essays together. structure, they told us, was pivotal. and yet each year we were given contradicting advice on how to achieve this structure. the sheer uncertainty of english, quite frankly, terrified me. i will never forget the intense relief i felt walking out of my last english exam EVER.
i have now had two years where i have isolated myself completely from the grayscales of literature and language, instead taking my refuge in the black-white boundries of medical school, where cranial nerve VIII is responsible for hearing and gluconeogenesis follows a clear-cut routine. and it is now that i realise that my self-imposed exclusion from anything remotely artistic has left me with a complete lack of initiative and independance.
independent thinking is rather unfathomable to someone who has spent so long immersed in a world where she divides everything into RIGHT and WRONG; GOOD and BAD; all categories synthesised by society and not my own free-thinking. i live life as an uncompromising dichotomy. not just my academics, but also my social relationships. the clothes i wear. the food i eat. the music i listen to. the books i read.
and this is a complete illusion. there is no such thing as a complete certainty, a true, universally-accepted “right-wrong”. who decides that trackie pants are daggy? sometimes i love nothing more than bumming around at home in my daggy clothes. who says that french fries are BAD? i would actually say that they are quite GOOD. why do i let these social hearsays dictate and control my life???
even my supposed ally, mathematics, is not innocent. i yearn for its clear right-wrong answers, only to be eluded by the graph approaching the asmymptote indefinately, the undefinable concept of “infinity”, and the hypothetical construct of “E”. why must maths succumb to the vagueness that plagues all other aspects of life?
i crave certaintly, but it has only now hit me that i am seeking something that clearly does not exist. i should STOP always looking for external comparisons and instruction, and instead look WITHIN myself for the answers. i put myself in a self-imposed dictatorship when i am blessed enough to be living in a democracy.
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.- Albert Einstein
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