INSERT MONIKER HERE, ER, TITLE
“Modicum” and “moniker”- words I’ve never really used- only read- that I’ve found myself using multiple times this past week. Take this trip to (ug) McDonald’s where I ordered a burger with guacamole on it. In theory. I pulled the burger box top back and all appeared well. Gee, thanks for the lime wedge, Mickey D’s, and the thoughtful sheet of deli paper that preserves the fancy-schmance roll. Several bites in and why no flavor, no textural sensation? Pulled off the bun and holy-no-guacamole! A mere modicum of the red and green that should be. In fact, it looks as though they wiped it off rather than put any on. That lime’s got a lot to compensate for.
shoulda just made dinner at home like this tasty one from last year- cilantro burgers with sriracha mayo. I prefer thinner burgers, but these guys were like beefed up sliders (proudly making Dad jokes and puns with the best/worst of ’em since age fifteen), so the chunkified meat worked well.
And now for something tasty from the “words” department.
Brain Pickings is a marvelous site dedicated to defining what it means to live the good life- talks of love, traits of character, themes of thought, truth, beauty- a focus on the heavy handed stuff that truly matters over the fun and fluff that has its place and to which I most certainly subscribe. Its author, Maria Popova, often chooses a theme and explores it by stitching together a variety of excerpts from famous writers in times past. She (more than) once shared the words of Albert Camus, words written during WWII that as she points out, still hold relevance today.
We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by the misery of the century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But superhuman is the term for tasks we take a long time to accomplish, that’s all …
… The first thing is not to despair. Let us not listen too much to those who proclaim that the world is at an end. Civilizations do not die so easily, and even if our world were to collapse, it would not have been the first. It is indeed true that we live in tragic times. But too many people confuse tragedy with despair.
I love that a word seemingly beyond our capabilities, superhuman, is made attainable by Camus defining it as something simply requiring time. That he confines tragedy to moments in that time, mere events really, rather than a collective whole. To not despair, to never give up. It’s the base decision from which to rally from, to rise up and continue from, a main theme in my own life, and an absolute necessity in our terribly wonderful, horribly frightening world.