“Daddy, what’s your favorite food?” It’s just one of those random questions my daughter asks me from time to time. “Barbeque.”
She stares at me confused. “You don’t eat meat!”
“True, but I’m blessed with a great memory.” I lovingly describe the BBQ brisket my dad would make – a hunk of beef the size of a catcher’s mitt, crusty and smokey on the outside, inside tender and juicy like a ripe peach. The memory brings me back to my late teens when my dad – out of work as usual – would while away an entire summer day standing around his old Weber kettle with a beer in one hand a pair of long metal tongs in the other and bags of woods chips and charcoal close by. By dinner-time the kitchen table would be laden with big bowls of baked beans and coleslaw, a basket of fresh corn bread, tall glasses of iced tea and a platter heaped with thick slices of the steaming brisket. Sweet, salty, tangy, smokey, spicy, creamy … delicious.
Her next question is predictable. “How can it be your favorite if you never eat it anymore?”
Well …
Denial,”refusing something requested or desired,” defines an aspect of my personality I suppose. Why give up something you enjoy? In the case of meat, I’d read too much about the cruel industry and wanted to take conscientious stand. But the act of saying “no” was also a personal test of resolve, will power and discipline. Would you? Could you? Are you strong enough?
Yeah, I am. I have will power to spare. I can look at a platter of ribs and suppress the urge to dive in and devour. While it may be something I love, it’s just food. It’s not something I need.
That became a template for other changes.
Getting stoned was something I never particularly enjoyed. So, while a few friends chided me for being “lame,” giving it up wasn’t a hard decision to make. Besides I always had alcohol – which I enjoyed much more.
Of course, I gave that up too. Drinking for the wrong reasons – numbing my pain – sapped the enjoyment of it. I miss that happy, silly, chatty version of myself I become after a few drinks though. Some days – the long, lonely ones – I yearn for something, anything to take the edge off, but I’ve learned to quietly live without it.
There are others. Small pleasures, small sacrifices. What about the big ones though, the important ones, the ones that feed your soul and make life worth living? If I never have another drink or burger, I’ll be fine. The lack of connection and intimacy on the other hand … They’re not simply “wants.”
I’ve met plenty of people who require little physical contact or affections. In a way I envy them. I’m at the opposite end of the spectrum thoughg. I’ve tamped down on the sexual, physical side of myself. Buried it under a veneer of cracked ambivalence.
It’s become an exercise in self-denial of a different sort. As much to do with a pointless faith and necessity as it does an exercise in will power and principle. At any point I could settle, live my life without … A half-life is better than none, right?
As for all of it, there are some sacred truths in my life I hold dear, but most rules are meant to be broken and that goes for my personal denials. I’m sure I’ll drink again, and perhaps someday I’ll ask even my dad to make his glorious BBQ brisket. And maybe … just maybe lightning will strike twice and I’ll feel that connection I’ve felt only once before.
“What’s your favorite …?”