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In my last newsletter I mentioned that we bought our Austin property with a team of Vinny fans and friends, and that we’re pretty excited about it. It was a pretty rad way to transition into the New Year. The process of getting there, though, was very, very stressful. The sellers (AKA former landlords) gave us very little leeway in the contract—no contingencies, lots of earnest money at stake, and a super tight timeline. If I asked for anything, it came with some sort of consequence. It came with the stick. It felt like a gauntlet, or that part of Super Mario Brothers when the music gets faster and every vanquished bad guy gets replaced with a more formidable one.
My coping strategy was Jameson. And one night, as the amber ambrosia gently seared the inside of my stomach, I found myself wondering “Why is this so adversarial?” We want to buy, and they want to sell. Our interests are actually aligned. Why are they assuming that unless I get thwapped by a big stick, they are not going to get what they want? Is there some sort of Landlord School that I don’t know about, where they teach you to be intractable?
But it’s not just landlords. So much of life feels like a fight, lately. If I had to describe what this last year in restaurants was like, I would say—like getting kickboxed in the head, daily, right after you brush your teeth. A belief in the necessity of fighting is baked into how the business world understands itself. I think it has something to do with capitalism (I promise this isn’t an angry anti-capitalist screed) and Darwinism coming of age together, in the 19th century, and feeding off one another. It is incredibly common to hear the language of evolution used to explain competition in business, or the need to constantly innovate and stay relevant. But if I had a dollar for every time I heard some horrible economic reality justified by “survival of the fittest,” I wouldn’t have to bother “evolving” my business at all.
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I really wish Darwin, or the dudes who interpreted his works for the public, had not gone with the word “fittest.” Yes, it’s true, but incomplete. It makes it sound like life on earth is all about brute strength. Kill or be killed. But what actually happens in ecosystems is more like survival of the suitable-ist (that just didn’t have the same ring). The organisms most suited, or matched, to their ecological niche, survive. You don’t look at a trembling translucent newt, living under a rock, and think of strength. But it's living its best life, pigment-free.
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In nature, there is also cooperation, and symbiosis, and sharing of resources. The wonders of our cells, even, or the miracle of photosynthesis, came partly from endosymbiosis—from a freaking bacteria getting swallowed by a single-celled organism, surviving, and then helping the cell out in exchange for a place to stay. Doing one another a solid. Nature is not all about fighting. That’s human nature.
Which is maybe why New Year’s resolutions can feel like a fight. We pit one part of ourselves—the part we think has its shit together—against our inner lazy loser. If we just gird up our loins for real this time, we can finally overcome whatever is shameful and harmful inside of us—laziness, drunkenness, fatness, broke-assness, whatever.
Positive change feels good. It is nice to set an intention, change a behavior that isn’t serving us, draw a brighter line between harmful and helpful. Bad habits and addiction are painful and resolving to change them can be powerful. And there are those who can conquer everything undesirable in themselves with sheer willpower.
But that has never worked for me. Because I have two sides to myself, with very different ideas about life: one is a taskmaster and the other is a rebel. My inner taskmaster makes resolutions, and my inner rebel breaks them. The internal battle can be exhausting, and usually I blame Rebel. Maybe some people have mellow internal rebels that are easy to outfox. I do not. Mine is a firestorm, an imp. She just loves to fuck up my best-laid plans. Sometimes it seems like she is trying to kill me.
But what if she is just trying to get my attention? Because she actually has something important to say? Something I need to hear.
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What if instead of ignoring them, we invited our Rebels to the table, and asked them what they really want?
When I do this, I see that Rebel doesn’t actually want what I think it wants—to binge watch shows that make me depressed, eat a whole cake, drink all the whiskey. In fact, she is kinda bored with the two dull pencils I gave her (cupcakes, Jameson) and wants the 264-color box of crayolas instead. Rebel is my creative side. My playful side. I think Rebel is the part in all of us that knows we deserve to have fun, and eat delicious things, and feel good. When I think about it like this, I start to wonder—why was I on Team Taskmaster again? And who is it that’s really causing the problems?
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What if—alongside our RESOLUTIONS—we made REBELUTIONS. Resolution: stop drinking for a month. Rebelution: actually take two days off a week, and do something fun that you want to do instead of more work in a slightly more comfortable chair. Resolution: start running. Rebelution: take five naps a week. Resolution: start Pilates again. Rebelution: Don’t get out of jammies on Sundays, and spend most of the day nested in bed with books and dogs and sketchpads.
When I do this, a miraculous shift happens. The pull of the “bad” behavior loses its steam, because rebelutions correct the internal voltage differential we create by denying part of ourselves. You realize that the force of many of our worst habits comes not from lack of willpower, but from not giving part of ourselves what it wants, and needs.
In one of the umpteen million self-helpish books I’ve devoured over the years, I remember reading a Buddhist koan about two guys and a stick (stay with me). The teacher has the stick, and says to the student, “If you believe this stick is real, I’ll beat you with it. If you don’t believe it’s real, I’ll beat you with it. If you do nothing, I’ll beat you with it.” So what does the student do?
He breaks the stick.
| In the spirit of inviting our Rebels to the dinner table, our theme for winter is Rebel Health, and our mascot is Radicchio (and the Chicory family in general). Chicories are the bitter and unappreciated rebels of the lettuce world. Loving them isn't always easy. Other cultures (Italy, for instance) respect bitter flavors more than we do in America. Because bitter has a place in the flavor pantheon. AND chicories work so well with sharp acid and hot, steamy dressings. Which is our plan for those irascible bady boys. We'll be rolling out Sexy Winter Salads next week that satisfy our wintertime need for sexy food and hardcore satiation. We'll keep I Yam What I Yam on the menu, a classic, and introduce a brand new winter salad called The Hot Chicory, with seared salmon, sauteed fennel, and a bold radicchio, endive and arugula (a mustard, not a chicory, but brings the heat) salad with a hot lemon-fennel vinaigrette, grapefruit and orange supremes, fennel fronds. You will dream about it afterwards. | | | | |
