The Meaning Of Life And The Lies We're Fed About It

When I was a senior in high school, I took a composition class. The big final assignment was to make a senior valedictory.  Basically a farewell to high school. This project was pretty much the reason for taking the class. You write a paper, the exact contents of which I don’t really remember, and you get to make a video and show it to the class. This video was a compilation of what ever pictures you wanted to include to show your journey through life in general and high school. It definitely stuck with me more than any assignment I’ve ever done, and I think most people who have done it would agree. Although it hadn’t crossed my mind in a long time until very recently, I now find myself thinking about it a lot. And I get sort of angry about it. But why would an old high school assignment pop up in my mind and annoy me now? I mean at the time, it really was an awesome assignment.

There was one gigantic flaw to it though…

You had to answer a series of questions and talk about world events a little bit and just basically what you took out of high school. But one of the first questions you have to answer and pretty much the overall topic for the entire assignment was to come up with the meaning of life. I repeat, they asked a bunch of kids to tell you what the meaning of life is. Are you kidding me?! I was seventeen. I barely knew the meaning of algebra. You want me to tell you what the hell we’re doing here and why? I can’t tell you that now, nor do I ever expect to.  There are times that I’m pretty sure pizza and Oreos are the meaning of life. And some days, they are.

At the time, I wasn’t particularly bothered by it, so many other kids before me participated in it so it’s probably fine. Why should I have a problem with it if most other kids didn’t? I remember being shocked and then staring at my computer blankly before writing down something generic that I have no hope of remembering. I thought it was pretty weird to ask kids to wrap their head around something so immense so I purposely worded mine to be “the meaning of life according to a seventeen year old kid”. If someone picked up on it, great. If not, I still followed the rules.

I think the reason this assignment bothers me so much now is because I’ve been thinking a lot about perception recently. And how no two people see a situation the same. We all perceive everything completely different than the person next to us. That goes for something as small as whether or not that pizza was delicious (the answer is always yes) or something unimaginable like what is the meaning of life.

We all place our own meanings on everything. And those meanings change- constantly. This project bothers me because it puts the idea in kids’ heads that there actually is a meaning to life and we have to go find it. Just sending us on an endless and ultimately disappointing mission. If we spend all our time searching for the meaning of life, we’ll miss out on life itself, and therefore miss out on the answer.

I want so badly to go back in time and change my answer in the paper. I wish I had listened to my initial reaction and I wish I had challenged that assignment. I think the reason I get angry about it now is because I totally bought into it. Just like most everyone else. I sat there for hours trying to think of the right answer to a question that has no right answer.  I feel tricked.

I wish someone had said any of this to us when we were doing the assignment. I wish they told us to remember that there is no right answer and whatever you choose to say only needs to be true to you in that moment. And be comfortable with the fact that in the next moment, it might not be. It’s not a question of THE meaning of life, but rather YOUR meaning right now.

With Love

Kim

P.S. If you're interested in the video I've spent all this time talking about, here's the link to it.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10150101156356095&l=2828299458297757601

99 Bottles of (Home Brewed) Beer On The Wall

Wow.. I have such a backlog of topics I want to talk about. Life's been pretty crazy these days but I'm finally buckling down and giving myself some much needed word therapy.

So guess what! I decided to try my hand at home brewing! This is something that I've idly thought about trying for probably a year or two but never really thought too hard about it. Well, I'm blessed with a significant other that listens to my idle thoughts even when I'm not listening to them myself. I must have mentioned it to him because he bought me a brewing kit from a local brew supply store for Christmas. Along with an awesome book titled How To Brew by John Palmer, and it was the push I needed to really give this whole thing a shot. 

The brew kit I received included everything I needed to get started. I spent several weeks before the brew day researching and reading. I joined an online home brewing forum and that proved to be extremely helpful. I wanted to do a lot of research because I knew nothing about the process of brewing beer, but knew enough to know that it’s pretty easy to totally screw up. A lot of what it boils down to is sanitation and trying to eliminate any contact with contaminants. Which isn’t hard, just takes some planning and paying close attention to what you’re doing. Otherwise the process is pretty straightforward. That’s not to say I wasn’t convinced I had done just about everything wrong.

I sought out the advice of the experienced home brewers on the forum I had joined and decided that my first brew should be an amber ale. It’s clean, simple, and delicious. I decided to go with an ingredient kit for this batch, and probably will for a few after that. Once I’m more confident, I’ll probably move towards recipes and partial grain mashing.

After cleaning and sanitizing everything (yes, there is a difference), I was ready to get started. I’m not going to bore you with every last detail of this process just know you basically make grain tea, add your malt extract, boil, add hops a few different times (bittering, aroma, and finishing hops), then cool it quickly, get it into your fermentation bucket, pitch the yeast, activate it, shut the lid, put on your airlock, move it to a dark place where you can keep the ideal temperature, and LEAVE IT ALONE. At this point, we have what’s called a wort- aka unfermented beer. That’s all about to change. After a few hours or up to a day, you’ll start to see the fermentation take place. The air lock will start to bubble. It’s one of the most exciting and satisfying things I’ve seen! *At least I didn’t screw it up that much!*

Let’s skip to bottling day. After about 2 weeks, we sanitized everything, racked the fermented beer into our bottling bucket, added some corn sugar solution (to aid in the bottle conditioning. This next fermentation is what gives us carbonation), and got to work bottling 2 cases of beer. We had a little left over to sample and it was….GOOD! Flat… but totally good! After letting the beer condition in the bottle for a few days (we left it for about a week and a half), they were good to go!

I’ve shared this batch with a lot of my friends and some experienced home brewers. It seems to be a huge hit! It’s really exciting to see people enjoy something that you worked so hard on and worried about so intensely. I’m even enjoying one right now as I write this (okay I’m totally not. I’m eating ice cream. But we’re going for mental aesthetics here.. work with me).

Of course there’s always room to improve. I’ve gotten lots of tips from some home brewer friends on how to make it even better. I think my plan for the next batch will be to brew another amber ale, take the tips, make adjustments and compare the next batch. I’m so excited I finally got the push I needed to give this a try. I really am so lucky to have found so many things in my life that I genuinely love to do and to have the people by my side to cheer me on. Soon I will be on my way to bigger and better beers!

Cheers,

Kim 

Try A Little Tenderness

We all have struggles that we wrap ourselves up in. Every person you see is fighting their own battle. Our own personal battles envelope us and make us forget those around us have problems too. We jump to conclusions, assume people are ignorant, dumb, rude, or just out to ruin our day simply because they don't know what our battle is that day.

They accidentally cut you off, are going too slow for your liking, take too long at the drive through window, or accidentally bump into you in the store. Many of us have a gut reaction to be angry about all of these things.  Why aren't they hurrying, I'm going to be late. How did they not see me? Why aren't they paying better attention to where I am? We're so quick to damn these people and we don't even know what things they could be struggling with.

I've been thinking about this a lot recently. About compassion. empathy. tenderness. Why are these things sometimes so hard to project? Even today- as I was thinking about some of my talking points for this post, a string of bad news and tragedy came my way. I was instantly set back. Began yelling at people on the road, getting angry that these other cars weren't being sensitive to my anger and sadness and stress that there's no way that they could have any idea about. Any compassion I had for anyone else was no where to be found.

I wish compassion and tenderness came easier. I wish it was my gut reaction rather than getting angry or cutting down someone I don't even know. I've been working on this for awhile. Noticing how irrational I'm being for yelling at a complete stranger for something they didn't do on purpose on the road. I'll catch myself and remind myself that they could be having a hard day too. That we all make mistakes and I just happened to witness this particular one.

It's become cool to be disingenuous or detached. It's weird to be compassionate or understanding. Judging those around us has become second nature. Why isn't it our first reaction to practice empathy? We've all heard about empathy since our early years. I remember learning about it in grade school and my teacher defining it as putting yourself in someone else's shoes. Why is it that this concept seems to have fallen to the wayside as just another vocabulary word?

I want to take on practicing compassion and empathy much like I've taken on practicing yoga. It's new, it's hard, and it takes dedication. I hope that if you relate to any of this, that you will try too. Maybe, little by little, we can make a more patient and understanding world. A world that loves instead of judges. It's so easy to be negative. It's a challenge to change your thinking. To admit your mistake and recognize when your judging too harshly. But it's a challenge worth taking.


With Love

Kim

Learning To Trust My Wings... But Enjoying The Fall

"A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because her trust is not on the branch but on its own wings."

 

I started yoga 3 months ago overcautious, afraid, unwilling to test any physical boundary, and had absolutely no balance (in every sense of the word). I didn't trust my own wings, if you will. I was afraid of getting hurt and afraid of looking stupid.

 

I've already tried more things in yoga than I ever anticipated, and I've barely begun. But the most important thing I've done is fall. Falling has made me braver (and if you knew how much I've fallen you'd think I'm fearless by now). It's made me realize that hitting my face on the ground in crow or teetering over in half moon is okay. Every time I fall it's a “huh.. that wasn’t so bad!” moment, and it fuels me to get back up and keep trying until I don't fall. I've stopped seeing falling as a failure and started seeing it as a fuel to the fire. A challenge.

 

I find myself trying more advanced modifications of poses, knowing full well I might come crashing down, and I’m totally okay with it. When I inevitably topple over on a new pose (probably because it’s a one legged pose), I crack a smile and get back up and keep trying. It’s extremely liberating to be able to feel this way. Not only being less afraid to hurt myself, but also not afraid to fail.

 

Part of me knew this would happen- it was the idea, after all. Yoga has taught me to embrace the difficulties, the discomfort, and the awkwardness. It’s allowed me to let go of the fear that someone is judging my practice or how much I wobble. Which has, in turn, allowed me to wobble less. So here’s to the falls that lead us to strength.

New Years Resolutions.. The Limit Does Not Exist

Well here we are again- another year coming to a close. For whatever reason, New Years seems to be my favorite occasion to blog about (see my earlier post, The Hilarity Of New Years Resolutions). Every year I half heartedly participate in the whole “what are YOUR New Years resolutions!?” discussions and always offer up something vague or painfully cliché- new workout plan, here I come!

I like to think that, as I notice certain things about my life I want to change, I try to actively start to change them right then and there. Or do a mini New Year resolution thing and say I’ll fix it but then forget about it. Anyway, I guess my point is, New Years resolutions seem to have turned into a something of a group cop out for our society.

Alright.. Bold statement. Don’t blow it off just yet. Goals are important. How else would we grow, right? Entering 2014 without any goals is just not a great way to go about life in general. But what bothers me about these goals for 20-whatever is the idea that you have to wait until the ball drops and the clock strikes midnight (and for your hangover to subside) to do anything about these goals. If you already have your New Years resolution(s) in your head, why on earth aren’t you doing anything about it right NOW?

Throughout 2014, I want to really deepen my yoga practice. Well since making that decision, I’ve already started practicing on my own at home more and more and it is still 2013. I also want to learn how to brew beer. Immediately before starting this post I had my nose buried in a book about home brewing. But I didn’t wait for the year to start over.. so does it still count as a 2014 resolution? Follow up question- Does it even matter? The term “New Years Resolution” is so incredibly limiting. It creates this illusion that, around this time of year, we have to take inventory of our lives and make giant changes right now. New Years resolutions seem to make us more reluctant to actively try and grow throughout the year.

I notice this more and more around October. I hear and participate in conversations about what we want to change about ourselves and it always comes down to “well, there’s no point in starting now, I’ll just wait until the New Year.” It’s as if we just decide to chalk this year up as a loss and keep doing what we’re doing. Why? Because change is uncomfortable and hard and it will seem more natural to start fresh next year.

The changing of the calendar year is so incredibly arbitrary. We know things change, I’m sure we can all look back on a given expanse of time and pick out several things and circumstances that are no longer a part of who we are now. And most of those things have nothing to do with the date. Come January second, after a day off of what appears to have been designed to let everyone nurse their hangovers, everyone resumes business as usual. Most of us have those new years resolutions we’ll start forgetting and for the most part, everything is exactly as it was on the last day of the previous year. I understand that starting the calendar over is as good a time as any to make personal changes, but on December 31^st and January 1^st, we all find the world looks eerily similar… because it is.

In all honesty, New Years Resolutions do serve a wonderful purpose. They give us a chance to really reflect on the year and how we want to improve. However, the limitations we create for ourselves using these resolutions are what frustrates me. There’s no reason to cop out at the end of a year and hold off making an effort towards a goal. There’s a reason the phrase “there’s no time like the present” is a cliché. Although this post does air on the side of gripe-y, I do wish you all a very very happy New Year filled with constant growth and change.

Love,

Kim

Who Needs Panera?

One of the most beautiful things about food and cooking is that it has the ability to transport you just about anywhere in the world and you don't even have to leave your kitchen. 

Today, I went to New York.

I've been in the mood for some good bread recently and I've been on a random bagel kick so I figured why not try my hand at some homemade, NY style bagels?

I found this recipe from a fellow blogger: New York Style Bagels

Before I get into it let me just say....

HOLY SMOKES

These are actually the best bagels I've ever had. Now, the link I posted has the recipe and all the detail you need, but I'll just share some tips I plan to keep in mind for the next time I make these (which will probably be next Sunday). 

As you may already know, there's not a whole lot of humidity in The Mile High City, so I ended up adding a significant amount of extra water to my dough. Just enough to incorporate all the flour though, resist the urge to add water if you don't need it, you want a firm dough.

When I was kneading the dough, I found it a lot easier to break the dough into sections and knead those, then kneaded it all together a few times. I found it was way more manageable than trying to manhandle the whole dough ball. And yeah, it does take about 10 minutes to knead it properly. This is a bagel. Not a cake. There's a considerable amount of gluten you need to develop in those 10 minutes. I'm assuming if you're making homemade bagels, you're not that lazy. So don't be. It should be very elastic when you're done.

(Pre and post kneading. Pretty different, huh?)

After a nice run on a typical gorgeous Denver day (and after the hour rest time was up), I was ready to make some bagels. I boiled my bagels for about a minute and a half on each side and I thought they were perfect for the kind of bagel I like. If you like a chewier bagel, boil a little longer. And for less chewy... well you know.

I was going for an everything bagel but I only had sesame seeds, poppy seeds, and salt. So I guess it's more of a some-things bagel? Anyway, I highly recommend a little sprinkle of salt on the top regardless of what else you top it with. It doesn't make it salty, but just enhances the flavor of the bagel. I might even consider doing an extra pinch of salt in the dough next time- but the salt on the top did the trick.

All of my toppings would have stuck just fine coming out of the water, but I went for an egg wash just for the sake of color and I'm definitely glad I did. It helped make them look as good as they tasted!

Time to bake!

After a run and another great yoga class, I couldn't think of a better snack than a toasted homemade bagel with a little butter. Obviously my hunger got the best of me and I forgot to snap the photo before I dug in. But honestly, after that first bite, I'm impressed I stopped eating long enough to take a picture at all!! Really guys.. They're that good.

Confession time- the hole in my bagels pretty much completely disappeared after the whole cooking process. I'm not saying I re-pierced my bagel for photo purposes, but I'm also not prepared to say I didn't.. I'll be making the holes considerably bigger next time. Not that I felt like it was particularly detrimental.. It's just more of a bagel flavored roll with a little belly button.

Now, if you don't think you're a good baker, please don't be scared off. Bagels are actually way easier to make than you may think and they're SO worth it. I'm not the biggest fan of baking and I'll be making them again and again. I mentioned at the beginning of this post one of the greatest things about food. Well, here's another. It's so exciting to me to share food experiences, recipes, and adventures with people. It helps us connect on a very basic level. So come on, try it out. If it doesn't work out, like anything else, its a learning experience and a funny story later. :)

~Kim