Skip to main content

One potato, Two potato

Yesterday I was sifting through a bag of little red potatoes, picking out the ones that weren't soft.

For some reason I just thought the soft ones weren't good any more. I honestly don't know where I learned that.

In any case, I sifted, and at the end of my bad potato-be-gone escapade, I had about a dozen "good" ones and a big pile of "bads" that I threw in the trash.

I stared at the trash, the little soft ones forming a potato layer of insulation for the garbage below it.

And I had a blast of thought - about my grandfather, and him and his family being so poor and only having potatoes to eat. And then it popped into my head, a potato famine that impacted the Irish so horribly.

I wondered if, like me, they all thought the soft potatoes weren't good to eat?

I think their parameters and circumstances were completely and utterly different. I also can't assume that they didn't have their own experience of privilege (like mine of trashing soft potatoes) alongside their suffering. Although my instincts are saying that the privilege they experienced was more along the lines of gratitude for living to see the next sunrise.

I didn't take the soft potatoes out of the garbage, despite these reflections. I didn't want the experiences of others to guilt me into trusting what my instincts felt were right. I mean, what if the soft potatoes were going bad and could make me sick?

But I was highly aware - that I was the blood of those before me, those who had experienced hardship and tragedy. I have hands formed from generations of DNA. I'm also aware that I can feel the hardships of others who I'm not related to by blood.

We can relate to most anyone, can't we? Just paying attention can open those gates up.

Yet relating to others doesn't necessarily mean we need to change our own identity, thoughts, behaviors. I have my own hardships; there were times in my 20's when I only had a handful of change to get me through the week. Where is that line we draw, the one that compels us to judge others' experiences as worse than ours? Can we give selflessly but not judge? Truth be told, I can never really know how someone is experiencing their own experience - I think I know, but only based on what I believe is the threshold of good and bad, based on MY own experience.

A whole host of ponderings, all over a bunch of spuds.

Spudosophy?

Well, maybe the little guys had some inspirational tidbits to psychically share with me today.  Maybe they know more than we think, see things we don't. They do have eyes after all.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

staying connected.

I made a big change.  I followed a call.  I was drawn to Colorado, and to the sun, and to things not quite in my view yet.  Two months ago I moved about 30 miles from Denver, to a cabin, in the mountains. It's remote here, but I still need to connect with the internet powers, and to share my music during these extended pandemic times, and to ease into mountain living with a sprinkling of modernity. I found a broadband company who can service my area and last week they installed all the moving internet parts. Yay! No. slow ... slow ... "can't connect"...over and over, "can't connect"...  or WON'T, internet, be honest, is it can't or won't??  (I *may* have accidentally been talking to the modem, and the laptop, the broadband company.) I persisted, and as I prepared for this morning's Zoom service, I plugged my ethernet cable right into the modem and I was connected.  Wahooooo ! A half hour later, it couldn't connect again, despite being...

everything counts.

What a week it has been. My MacBook crashed and needed a new battery. I lost my phone. I found out I have arthritis in my hips. There is a horrid smell coming out of my apartment building A/C so I receive a toxic welcome each time I walk into the building and hallway to my home. Lots of driving, too, which doesn't help the hip sitch, finishing off the week with a journey down to Kohl's to make a return only to learn their computer systems were down.  A long list, counting one by one all the things that went wrong.  Thank You for joining me on this episode of "Poor Me." Oh! And then the money counting; realizing I had spent more than I made and coming face to face with how what I bring to the world is valuable, yet somehow not valuable enough to support a regular 'ol life. What I do counts. Who I am counts.  With each annoyance, frustration, sadness, negative storm cloud, I also had moments when I looked at the beauty around me, slowed down, took a gratitude invent...

It's not always black and white.

When I arrived in Oregon eight years ago, it was an adjustment. We are from New York. End of post. Kidding. I noticed, and wasn't afraid to ask: "Where are all the black people?". Now asking a question like this came from an honest and innocent place inside me. And it also might be offensive to some. I understand the implications yet I'm still sharing this story because what followed was pretty impactful for me. New York is a port where peoples from all nations arrived to make a better life. They brought with them sadness for families left behind, excitement for new beginnings, and culture, food and language. Like folks who traveled to this West side of the country to explore new frontiers, there are new beginnings. Different experiences of it, but still important to note a similar story of leaving the nest for something better. New York is very different than Oregon because of the diversity of the influx of different cultures who arrived, and as a res...