Kale & Avocado Surprise

On my scenic walk to the beach today, I stopped to admire this sock which was spun by some anonymous spider whose talents could be better applied to benefit our species.

For breakfast today: a kale and avocado salad. During the seed-removal process involving me, holding a knife and pushing hard (brilliant, I know), I put a hole in my hand. Oops! I was holding half of the avocado in my left hand while aiming the knife with my right, intending to stick the seed and twist it out, all impressive-like. I don't often try that maneouvre, and for good reason. As I observed the avocado-covered knife's sharp tip slip from the seed and veer towards my hand with great purpose, in my head I could hear my father berating me for my misjudgment: "Sonya! Think of the consequences before you do things -- think, 'So, if the force of the knife misses its mark, where will that force go?'" Into my hand, riiiight.

I inspected my hand and saw the laws of physics clearly illustrated therein. The knife had left a small hole (cool!) between my middle and ring fingers. It didn't hurt. I just looked at it, waiting to see if it would bleed. Then I wondered if it should hurt, and whether the fact that it was not hurting was a good or bad thing. Sooo, there I was, standing in the kitchen, watching, looking into the hole... la la la. Finally, some blood. Hand still didn't hurt. I carefully wiggled my fingers to make sure everything was connected properly.

Satisfied that I wasn't going to die, I rinsed my hand in the sink -- that's when the pain asserted itself like a biatch you just didn't want to hear from because you already knew what it was going to say. And the pain that alerted me to the fact that I had a hole in my hand was a pain unlike any other. An inner pain. An inner-hand pain.

This entire scene was funny to me (earlier I had been reading about surgeons, so this kitchen + knife episode convinced me further of the importance of keeping my mind only on things I want to experience).

No salads were harmed in the making of this meal. No salty salads were massaged, either.

For the rest of the day I made smoothies, salads.. ate an orange... and listened to Malcolm Gladwell read his Outliers book, in which he contends that successful people (those that have developed a chosen talent) are largely products of their time and place and many other factors, etc. It sounds like an obvious statement to make, but actually his examples are kinda interesting: there are no rags to riches stories; no man is an island (and other clichés); research across multiple disciplines consistently maintains that the magic number of hours of focused effort it takes to master a skill = 10,000; child prodigies just started earlier than most (+ coupled with their obsessive desire to develop the skill in the first place, which implies they have some talent to begin with).

Genius is focus. Otherwise, hole in hand.