Getting There



Trinidad, July 9, 2011



I am a lover of puzzles. Not just puzzles, but mysteries. Maybe not as much a lover of them, as captivated and intrigued by them. When I was younger, before the Internet and Google, mysteries could percolate for long periods of time in my mind.Today we needn't wait to find anything out, a luxury for someone like me.
But getting answers quickly isn't always the most satisfying thing; brain teasers, and tactile puzzles such as metal rings and interlocking wooden blocks deliver their satisfaction in great part through the joy of discovery and the delicious feeling of getting close to 'rightness' - that salivary sensation that one is on to something good, that a solution is at hand.

Two weeks ago, after trying for years to eat more healthfully, I suddenly felt the urge to detox. Well, it wasn't that sudden: I had bought a book on the subject about 8 months before, and stuck it on my bookshelf. I wasn't a terribly unhealthy eater by any stretch, but I could have used more fruit and vegetables and a little less junk food in my life - and I was dogged by an inability to kick the Coca Cola habit. There was a will, but it wasn't strong enough to make the way stick. I'd quit for a while and start again, quit and start again.

A few weeks before the detox, I actually did quit Coca Cola to lessen my caffeine burden. I'd been having some palpitations, so I eliminated all stimulants. For me, that was Coca Cola, the occasional cup of coffee and my favorite pekoe cut black tea. It was effortless because I was exchanging them for something I valued much more highly - i.e. my health. As soon as it clearly and uncompromisingly became one or the other, it was an easy choice.

So, on detox day I took that book down from the shelf and set about making an eggplant and tomato soup from a recipe within its pages. Just a few simple ingredients (eggplant, tomato, red bell peppers, onion, garlic, bay leaf and rosemary and olive oil) yielded a delicious meal that I enjoyed with my entire body and mind. It's the kind of rightness that can move you to tears.

I've also found myself needing less salt and sugar. And less meat. I wasn't planning on reducing these things, but there it was. What happened? A mystery. So many years of effort, false starts, so much recrimination - and such ease at the end? It didn't add up.

What confluence of events or conditions suddenly made this goal achievable? Were all previous efforts poorly timed, in some way deficient, or were they simply accumulative? I don't know.

But, I do have a theory: some time ago I began to suspect that I'd been skipping steps in some areas of my life; that I was trying to achieve things before completing the (sometimes very ill-defined) prerequisites. Maybe this was something like that. Maybe I chanced upon a skipped step, completed it, and presto! everything fell effortlessly into place. But...I don't know exactly what that step was. Or, maybe I inadvertently addressed a root cause - and domino-like, all the inner opposition to my stated goal fell away.
So here I am - one mystery solved, and no idea how I did it.

 Trinidad, July 10, 2011