Welcome to my journal! It echoes my thoughts and feelings as I journey through life. I hope you connect with what you read. If you enjoy this journal, please subscribe.
On Thursday evening I had dinner with my aunt and uncle. Here in Germany, working for two weeks, they set aside a little time for us to see each other and share stories, and having last seen each other several months ago, we had many to share. Berlin being my city, I picked the restaurant—an Italian place my girlfriend’s mom is especially fond of. After translating and reading out the menu to my aunt and uncle, I recognised a familiar wrinkle of concern on their brows. Pizza or pasta? I opted out of agonising over each delectable dish and, instead, resolved to eat the pasta I had eaten there a month or two before. After a little more umming and ahhing—and with a recommendation from our waiter—we finally placed our orders. When the food came, we all feasted, and, naturally, we all tried one another’s dinners. I undoubtedly had the best dish. Tagliatelle tossed in a cream and mushroom sauce, topped with roasted tomatoes and a generous portion of seared fillet. Despite winning the main dish round, my uncle won the dessert round with his order of Cassata Siciliana. Safe to say, I stole several spoonfuls.
I often play this game. When eating out with my whole family or only with my girlfriend, we’ve established a culture of trying one another’s dishes. Whether dipping a fork into everyone’s plate is characteristic of our family or of South Africans at large, there is a second aspect that I believe is unique to my household. When my parents and I eat out, after tasting one another’s dinners (or, often, slices of cake), we proceed to review our experiences. We will then decide which of us has selected the best item from the menu, and that person will have won. The prize, of course, is that you get to eat the whole plate of gorgeous fillet pasta, while all the other suckers only get a taste. My mom is known for sampling my food and my dad’s and, when true, declaring, “oh no, no, no, I’ve definitely won.” The whole game is a little rowdier and less rule-bound than it may seem, but still very serious. No joking about food in this family.
Though my aunt and uncle will be here for two more days, initially, I wasn’t sure how much I’d be able to see them. I’m working on two big projects at the moment, both due in about a month, and I’ve been throwing every spare minute their way (okay, nine out of ten spare minutes). My weekend was planned out, full of working and studying. When their weekend suddenly opened up and they asked if I’d be available to do something with them, I froze. I think an implied part of the who-wins-dinner game is that there is a right choice, and it’s your job to find it. We don’t cook the food or design the menu. We just show up and pick something. When I end up preferring my mom’s dinner to mine, I feel like I made the wrong choice. I have a relatively long list of work to do that will impact my professional life in a tangible way. I also have the opportunity to spend time with my family, a rarity when you live twelve thousand kilometres away from them. I realise that both things are important, and prioritising either option over the other may have repercussions. How do I spend my weekend? I struggle to discern what the rightanswer is. I end up driving myself crazy, creating several variations of how I could portion my time between family and work, and then attempting to predict the emotional and productive results of each variation—all to try and rank the outcomes of each option, killing off the poor ideas and trying to refine the good ones. The morning following our dinner, my mind worked my schedule over and over until smoke poured out of my ears. The overthinking isn’t isolated to this weekend, either, I often smell burning coming from somewhere inside my brain when I face a decision.
The last time I ate at that Italian place was with my girlfriend and her parents. She ordered beautiful beetroot gnocchi, filled with truffle cream. Her dad had a big bowl of spaghetti, smothered in butter, parmesan and truffle, too. My fillet pasta was excellent, but it was wonderful to steal bites of their food. My girlfriend’s mom had seafood pasta, and though she loved it, I don’t do seafood. I didn’t even try it. I suspect that the restaurant offers quite a number of pastas that I would find particularly satisfying. I imagine that they also serve an appetiser or two that I would hate. I believe that there are poor choices and good ones, but perhaps, as with this weekend, there is not one right choice. I think that even if were I able to finish calculating which options would be most emotionally rewarding and professionally productive, there still may not be one clear answer. I suspect that there may be a handful of choices that will satisfy and delight me. The fuel that drives my overthinking machine is the fear of making the incorrect choice. I don’t want to be stuck with the worst bowl of pasta on the menu. I’ve already figured out how to sort the generally crap ideas from the good ones. Now I’ve got to learn that whether I get truffles or fillet, I’ll probably have a great evening with my family, anyway.
That, of course, is a very silly example. Always go with fillet. If you enjoyed this journal, please send it to someone you love.