Learning and understanding

I spent a lovely day recently going through family albums.  I noticed that many of our photos, especially once photography became more accessible, revolved around meals and family gatherings.  With my friends too, our photos are often taken with food.  Obviously, then, food is an integral part of living.  We share meals with the people that we love, and it binds us together.  Everyone has a special dish that signifies home and comfort and love, everyone has a meal that means celebration.  We have rituals that accompany our meals — setting places; using a favourite plate; telling the story (again) of what Aunt so-and-so did on that dinner... There are people who spend a lot of effort trying to remove the fun from eating.  They don’t do it by simply decrying food; instead they turn food into an enemy.  They “reimagine” traditional foods; they add “twists” and they talk about “improving” items, making them “healthy”.  Because it’s not about really changing eating habits, it’s about buyi

What are your stories?  Our stories are who we are, what we believe, our hopes and dreams.  They are our shared history, and our links with others.  Our stories outlive us, inspire us, comfort us and warn us. I was reflecting on the power of stories this week, and how we use them.  When a friend announced that she was pregnant with her first child, everyone there shared her experiences with childbirth.  At the engagement of another friend, we all talked about our own engagements, weddings and marriages.  And when someone introduced her new partner, we immediately related how we met our partners.  All our shared experiences. We comfort each other with tales of the lives of those we lost, of the difficulties we survived and of where we got inspiration.  When I was first diagnosed, one dear friend shared with me his mother’s case, telling me that she had survived 15 years (at that time) when she was expected to live maybe 4 months.  Another told of his battle with pancreatic cancer, a