A "New Year" Question Worth Asking

And a Loaded Nachos Recipe That Will Satisfy Your Pickiest Eaters

Photo by Alex Shute on Unsplash

This past August on the eve of my 45th birthday, I laid in bed crying angry tears while my husband sat quiet and attentive beside me.

“What am I even doing with my life? I’m 45 and feel like a complete dud. I mean what’s the point of me besides doing laundry and washing dishes?” I moaned. And then a fresh wave of misery washed over me, forcing me to bury my face in the pillow.

This wasn’t a new conversation for my husband and I to have. They used to happen every 3 months or so. Then I started stretching them out to twice a year, then once a year. Now I was on an every other year schedule, which felt like an improvement for everyone involved.

These conversations usually evolved into me moping around the house for a day or two, disheveled in my robe, muttering under my breath about all the many glorious lives I could have lived if I’d only been someone else with more talent or more courage or more determination. Then I’d round out the experience by I crying till my eyes resembled swollen sponges. Eventually, I’d snap out of it, start wearing clothes with a waistband and brushing my hair. But for that day or two of despair, it was complete misery.

So here I was on the cusp of my 45th birthday ready to embark on a multi-day pity party, and the idea of it just made me tired. I didn’t want to celebrate my four and a half decades on this planet feeling miserable about myself. And as I lay there crying into my pillow, a small voice in my head—a surprisingly kind voice—asked me a question?

“Is this true?”

That brought my sobbing to an abrupt halt.

It was actually a good question.

Was I a complete dud? Did I truly exist only to fold neat piles of laundry and load an impressively organized dishwasher (which, not to pat myself on the back or anything, but I do.) I mean, if the little voice in my head was looking for the truth, well, could I answer the question without my usual melodrama?

Seeing as how I was almost 45 years old, I figured I could put on my big-girl pants for a minute and give an honest answer.

And the honest answer was “no.”

No, I wasn’t a dud.

No, I wasn’t a cheap firework whose fuse had been lit only to fizzle out with an unenthusiastic sputter.

No, I’d actually done some things in my life: I chose to study a topic I loved at university and reaped the benefits of that choice every single day, I fell in love and married a good man, I lived overseas, I gave life to and was raising six lovely babes, I wrote three novels (true, they sat safe and largely unread on my laptop, but still I had done it), I traveled around the world…

My tears started to dry up. No, I hadn’t found the solution to the plastics crisis or orchestrated world peace or even owned a company car. But I’d done some things…and the list was just getting started. As I began to add to my list, a revelation hit me like a spatula to the forehead:

I get to choose which voices I listen to.

You know what I mean here, right? No, I don’t mean the voices that whisper from the toaster about the plausible points of the Brains in Vats theory. That’s something completely different (and I’ve got a hunch that requires medical attention.) I’m talking about that soundtrack that plays in the back of your mind all the time, telling you that the shirt you’re wearing is gorgeous or ugly or proof that you have no sense of style whatsoever and should henceforth roam the world in unflattering sweatsuits. We all have a soundtrack. The question is: what exactly are we listening to?

Okay, so what on earth does any of this have to do with cooking or food or life in one’s kitchen? Here’s the answer: what we feed ourselves matters. Whether we’re living on a steady diet of Doritos and Pepsi or voices of negativity, lies, and defeat, that lack of nourishment will have ramifications in our broader lives, from health issues to unrealized dreams.

Please don’t take this as a chirpy reminder to “eat your veggies and think happy thoughts.” No, this is an invitation to ask yourself the hard questions, perhaps the hardest being, “Am I telling myself the truth?”

Because when I asked myself this question back in August, yes, I was able to list off a lot of the ways that my life wasn’t necessarily a dud. But when it came to answering truthfully about my purpose, the truth felt less like a warm hug and more like a hard stare.

The truth was that at that point in time my purpose didn’t amount to much more than caring for our home and making sure food was on the table. I’m not diminishing those roles at all, but when I asked myself to get truthful about my purpose, the answer was hard to admit, but it needed to be said.

“I’m not taking healthy, potentially life-changing risks right now because I’m afraid of failing. I’m hiding behind my domestic to-do list because I’m afraid that if I actually try at something, I’ll be let down. Or I’ll find out that I’m not strong enough or adequately skilled. Or people will see what I really care about and think it’s silly or a waste of time.”

Yikes.

Telling the truth can be hard, but I wonder, as we stand at the starting line of this brand new year, maybe asking yourself this question might be the beginning of some wonderfully nourishing changes in your life.

It was for me and next week I’ll share with you about a new challenge I decided to undertake as a direct result of my 45th birthday revelation. Until then, I wonder what truth-telling you are hearing in your life these days. Feel free to share down in the comments below!

But I can’t sign off without having some delicious morsel to pass along to you. In the words of Bob Cratchit, our family has been “making rather merry” over the past several weeks, which means I’ve spent a lot more time perched around game boards and snuggled up on the couch watching movies rather than concocting culinary treasures in The Kitchen.

However, that doesn’t mean I haven’t been cooking. In fact, our family has a few winter-time recipe favorites that I’ve pulled out from the old cookbooks during our “merry-making” and I will be passing them along to you in the coming weeks. Check out the link below for this week’s!

Today’s “Chili Cheese Nachos” comes from vegan chef, Angela Liddon. This dish is a perfect weekend dinner when the Big Game is playing in the background or when you’re taking a breather from a blood-boiling round of Monopoly. I whipped a batch of these up last weekend when we had company over. My son’s friend, a 10 year-old boy with a typical 10 year-old’s palate, devoured one plate of these and then came back to polish off a second. (For his benefit, I kept the fact that the dish was “vegan” under wraps;)

Enjoy, friends!