Something you may not know about me… I LOVE pesto.
It was one of the only things I could “cook” in my non-cooking years, and whenever I go to an Italian restaurant in the US, I order it. Every time. So what better than going to the motherland.. Italy itself.. to do the epic of all pesto taste-testings? Right??! ..
Um… not so much. Would you believe that out of every single restaurant we went to or checked out in Italy, only two.. TWO… had pesto on the menu? Seriously? How can one do the most epic of all pesto taste-testings without pesto on the frickin menu??
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The answer is, they can’t. So instead of my pre-determined pesto path, I found myself on a new and unexpected journey with bolognese.
Oh the delicious red sauce with meats of various spiciness to delight my taste buds and fill up my belly! The perfectly al dente spaghetti in Sorrento still makes my mouth water just thinking about it. And that’s no literary hi jinx I’m pulling, that’s reality. SOOOooooo GOOD.
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So I only got to have a little bit of my pesto… but BECAUSE OF THAT I got to have a whole slew of new and completely unexpected bolognese.
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And yes… that is our delicious metaphor for life. When we don’t get what want…. when things go “wrong”….. these are the times we get all the cool sh*t we never expected.
Some of the best things in life only come when our plan “fails.”
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I’m not saying don’t plan… or go after the things you want in your life, hell no. I’m not saying when things do go accordingly to plan, that’s less awesome… not even close. A perfect example of things going according to plan and that being awesome is the very start of the World Tour, when I finally saw Stonehenge. Those experiences of achievement, where dreams become reality, those moments are huge and awesome in their own way. F*ck yeah.
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No.. what we’re talking about today is bolognese in the place of pesto. What we’re talking about is how there is perhaps even more aliveness in the bits of life that are precisely NOT what we thought they’d be. How ONLY in the unexpected can we ever get this type of epic life experience.
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Had my life gone according to the original plan, I certainly wouldn’t be working from Greece today, living a different part of my dream in a way I likely never would have thought up. And even if I had thought it up, I very likely never would have done it. And now I am. It’s hard to absorb even sitting here right now looking out on the Santorini caldera.
WE MUST MAKE THE EFFORT TO SEE.
We must make the effort to connect to what’s awesome in our lives every day no matter what it looks like, no matter what’s happening, and no matter how right we think we are about just how sucky we’re certain it is.
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The next time your plans are going gratuitously to sh*t… whether it’s now, next week, or 5 years from now… instead, know you’re actually amidst a bit of your own life that is exactly this version of awesome. Instead of wishing things were different, recognize the gift you’ve actually been given. Open your eyes and mind beyond what you initially see to see the opportunity and awesomeness you actually have.
#LEGIT
The first/second-to-last pesto dish I had. The sedcond/last was this increeeeeedible pesto gnocchi on the Amalfi Coast. Didn’t get a pic of that, but it certainly smoked this dish, and was one of the most awesome of all my Italy meals.
THIS… this DELICIOUS meal and metaphor for life. Now and forever, I will always love bolognese.
