These Times, These Times
Finding joy in small things while the world is falling apart
A friend recently brought over a carrot-beet-ginger salad that was so good I had to make it for a potluck I was going to. It involves shredding raw carrots and beets, and I had just the tool for that: a shredding blade for a food processor.
When the potluck day came around, I brought out my food processor and the blade. But something was wrong — the blade didn’t fit. It was for a smaller food processor I once owned that was long gone, and I couldn’t find a similar blade for the one I have now. I grated the vegetables by hand.
For some reason I had a hard time finding a blade replacement, but my sister helped me locate the right one on eBay. I was so happy when it arrived.
And then I thought, Wait, the world is falling apart. How can I be this happy about a food processor blade?
I know, I know. People have been through tough shit before. So much tough shit. Most of us who are my age and living white middle-class or upper-middle-class or whatever-class-we-are lives in the United States have no idea. No idea. We can only imagine. We can only read. We can only listen to stories and know that for most people on this Earth, in most times, life has been hard. We’ve had it easy. Everyone suffers, that’s the First Noble Truth in Buddhism, but we don’t know that suffering. Not the suffering of starving. Having bombs being dropped on us. Being forced to do slave labor. The list goes on.
Our insulation from that kind of suffering makes us even more inclined to freak out now. We haven’t been toughened up by adversity. Mind you, I’m not in the “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” camp. Plenty of people are weakened, even broken, by excessive suffering and trauma. But just as our muscles need challenges and struggles to get stronger, so do our psyches. And many of us haven’t had serious struggles. Really serious ones.
Still, that doesn’t change the fact that we have so much to freak out about. We’re living through the darkest times most of us have ever known. We’re hurtling at alarming speeds into even darker times. They may end up being the darkest times humanity has ever known, and that’s saying a lot.
The insane political situation would be enough to drive anyone over the edge. I didn’t have on my 2024 bingo card that Democrats would turn against our own best chance at defeating fascism in November. A potentially staged assassination attempt? That doesn’t surprise me. The media elevating their ratings above upholding the very democracy that protects them? Even that is no longer surprising. But Democrats doing a far-too-late-in-the-game reversal on Biden? Who would have thought.
As bad as all that is, it’s made so much worse by taking place against a backdrop of the unfolding climate crisis, plus a continuing global pandemic that’s leaving millions dead or debilitated.
I keep reading that our ecosystems are becoming less efficient at absorbing CO2. Floods and droughts are on the rise. Things we love to consume, like coffee and avocados, could be at risk. Climate change increases the chances of more pandemics.
The continuing refrain: The stakes are high. The stakes are high. The stakes are high. Unprecedented. Unprecedented. Unprecedented.
How much can one little creature take?
There’s no escaping our existential crises. You can stay off social media and avoid the news, but things are still happening. We need to know about them.
I’m at an odd point in my life where I feel like I need to know how to plan for the coming years. If I live into my early 90s, I could have another 30 years. But how many of those will be good?
That’s a question for anyone who’s my age, and it would be a question in any era. It’s always a good idea to carpe diem.
These days, though, it’s a more loaded question. When will climate change get so bad that our food supply chains fall apart, we run out of water on the West Coast, mass migrations overwhelm the areas that remain habitable? Will it be 5 years, 10 years, 30, 100? I need to plan for retirement! Should I retire now, though I can’t afford it, and enjoy the last few good years of life on our planet? Or do I have more time?
No one knows, no one can answer these questions. And I don’t think about them every minute. But they’re always there in the background, ready to jump to the front of the line every time I read a scary headline.
Then I get distracted by a food processor blade. An amazing Le Creuset deal on Facebook Marketplace. The antics of our cat companions. Connections with friends and family. TV. A good book.
What do we do with all this? How can we keep living with this weird tension?
I don’t know. So I go on. I work. I pay my bills. I do the laundry and water the plants. I go hiking. I have friends over. Now and then, I even take trips.
And every day, I enjoy things. Right now, as I type this, the thing is the R&R Spa, our urban backyard oasis, with its pops of yellow and red flowers against the green of lemon and yucca trees, bamboo, angel’s trumpet, jade plants. Birds chirping, squirrels chattering, hens in a nearby yard clucking. Bees buzzing and butterflies fluttering. Hummingbirds zooming in to look me in the eye and helicoptering off at lightning speed before I can photograph them.
Friends are coming over later to enjoy the warm summer weather with us in the R&R Spa, and we’ll share food, including my carrot-beet-ginger salad.
The world may be falling apart. But we can still enjoy good food now.
Carrot-beet-ginger salad
1/4 cup shallot, minced
2 tablespoons fresh ginger, peeled and minced
1 garlic clove, minced
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
1/2 cup olive oil
4 cups carrots, finely shredded
4 cups raw beets, peeled and finely shredded
In a blender, purée shallot, ginger, and garlic with rice vinegar, soy sauce, and sesame oil. With the motor running, add olive oil in a stream and blend until smooth.
Shred the carrots and beets in a food processor.
Toss the carrots and beets with the dressing.
It’s not the first time I’ve written about our crazy times, and it likely won’t be the last. More here:
Living in These Times
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
I love this post. Thank you. Thank you for capturing that it is possible to both be aware of what's going on in the world, to ache for all the human and planetary suffering, AND to also live life as best we can with moments of sweetness and wonder. Maybe it's not only possible. Maybe it's also essential.
Allow me to share today's little moment of delight: a fleeting but meaningful connection with the woman in the long line of our neighborhood bakery. We chatted about how great it is to have a decent bakery we can walk to, where the older folks in the community gather for breakfast (on a Friday morning, it is mostly older folks!). We could have both been on our phones checking text or emails and growing increasingly annoyed with the long line. Instead, we looked up, chatted, and acknowledged our shared humanity in this small way. The long wait in line suddenly wasn't long enough.
I, too, find solace in the garden, friends, bees, birds, and good fresh summer food.
May this cookbook editor request a refinement of the ingredient list? I assume that the 4 cups of the carrots and the beets refer to the shredded measure. So perhaps "4 medium carrots/beets, shredded (about 4 cups)" or even better (how did I ever live without a kitchen scale?), "# lb carrots/beets, shredded (about 4 cups)"? (I've found that a food processor can't reproduce the size and texture of hand-grated shreds, though it is much faster and takes less muscle!) The dressing sounds really yummy! And here's another fabulous beet recipe for you -- I take it to potlucks and it is quickly devoured. I originally clipped it out of a Delicious Living issue; nice that it's findable online. https://www.deliciousliving.com/recipe/roasted-red-beet-hummus/