Happy Interdependence Day.
To go with your fireworks and store-bought potato salad! (And pizza??)
Good morning, dear wild and beautiful readers1—
I’m over a week late in posting, according to my imperfect commitment to posting fresh blogs every first and third “Wednesday,”2 and I considered just skipping this one and getting back on track next week, but I have this nagging little pin-pricked feeling like I forgot something, so here we are!
I suppose that is one of the loveliest things about creating a habit. We rejoice over the good habits.
As I say to my kids, let’s clarify expectations here. My brain is disorganized and a bit untidy—much like my house, schedule, car and email inbox during summer—and I had an idea of what I wanted to post last week before we flew to Ohio. But that idea feels a little like leftovers in the fridge that may have turned. How many days can an idea keep before growing stale or green? What if it’s in an airtight container?3
Without further a due…
THE IDEA THAT IS NOW LEFTOVERS BUT MAY STILL BE MOSTLY EDIBLE:
Considering Interdependence on Independence Day.
During Mindfulness Camp with Ruth at the Zen center just before the 4th, they did a great little presentation on how many people are involved in every moment of our lives, whether or not we think of it. About Interdependence.
The Abbott asked the kids “where does pizza come from?”
Ruth’s hand shot up: “Shopey’s pizza!” Yes, but where does that pizza come from?
Another kid, a bit proud: “We buy the ingredients at the store and make our pizza at home!” Yes, but where do those ingredients come from?
Another kid, with the urgency of having had a light-blub-thought: “Ohhh, you have to buy the FLOUR at the store and make your own dough!” Yes, but where does the flour come from?
An awkward gap here. The school-aged kids shuffled in their seats.4 A young boy behind me whispered to his mom, “Now I want pizza.”
The Abbott showed mercy and clicked open a PowerPoint presentation onto the large screen at the front of the room. It, at first, was a large white canvas.
Click: a cartoon of wheat. “You start with growing wheat,” he said in a thick accent, his almond shaped eyes bright and eager. “That takes farmers.”
Click: add a cartoon of a factory. “Then the wheat gets transported to a factory where it’s ground into flour. That takes truck-drivers and factory workers.”
Click: add an image of an Italian-looking pizza joint. “Then the flour gets delivered to, in this case, a restaurant, where they make the dough. This takes more truck drivers and a chef.”
The Abbott stopped there. The point was made. But that only gets us the crust! So I’ll take it a few more steps to further the point.
Think: cheese. Starts with cows in a dairy farm. They give milk which makes the cheese. Then the cheese is transported to the restaurant. This takes dairy farmers, veterinarians (to keep the cows healthy), cheese-makers and more truck drivers.5
Think: tomatoes for sauce. Think: any and all toppings. The vegetables were grown by farmers, harvested, cleaned and pureed or cut before they even get to your pizza. That’s many hands for each topping! And we haven’t even touched on meat toppings! Mee oh my!
And this is just one example. This is just PIZZA!
The origin story of each and every product we purchase and consume involves countless other people to place it into our clutches, people who are hopefully getting paid well for their labor and treated fairly by superiors. Even a quick pause to consider the lineage of an object or a food accesses a tiny portal somewhere inside us to consider the endless, countless, threads that come together to create this fabric of life we inhabit.
This line of thinking is active opposition to divisive thinking. This line of thinking cultivates connection and gratitude.
Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence (what we are ostensibly celebrating on this here 4th of July/Independence Day): all people are created equally and have rights that include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It seems we need to remember this. It seems we need to enforce this. Our current administration favors save-yourself-ness above all else. Cultivating separate-ness (alongside fear) keeps the masses angry, confused, and too disorganized to push back.
This pizza exercise, tiny and insignificant as it may seem, actually brings oxygen to the muscle that remembers our interdependence. This muscle remembers we need each other, we work best at a team, we are safest when we protect each other. By taking note of all who contribute to our health and sanity, we honor this truth.
This is crucial. Remembering this will be what saves us.
I’m assuming as much but if you’d prefer to be referred to as buttoned-up and ugly, my apologies.
ahem, sometimes spilling into Thursdays…
I still like the idea, but now it comes with a zillion little fruit flies hovering above it like pig-pen, each of those bitty-creatures like teeny sentient balls of puss-with-wings. They want to be included. So let’s include them.
My middle-aged brain went, of course, to mentally exclaiming, “Bueller!”
SO MANY truck drivers. And if you want to get granular with that piece, of course you have the hands that manufactured the truck, the people who trained the drivers, the gasoline transportation of the gasoline and the teenager who considers his job at Conoco Gas where the semi-truck fills up the tank to be an interruption to his endless smoke break…