Eating With My Sister

Yesterday, as I was taking a spoonful of bubur ayam (chicken porridge) in a traditional Javanese restaurant, my sister nonchalantly said something to me.

“Bro, you know, my life feels a thousand times easier when I’m not picky about food.”

The conversation revolved there a little bit, then it went somewhere else. We talked about this and that, but that one sentence stood out the most. I was quite taken aback by that. I still remember those times when she “weeded out” the garlic or bean sprouts or onions in her food because she just couldn’t handle the smell.

When I heard that, I felt something within me said, “wow, holy shit, I feel the same!” The more insistence and preference I have, the more difficult life becomes; the more I hold into my idea of how things should be, the harder the arrows of life pierces me.

She didn’t say that to impress or to affect me in any way, but it did.

January 1, 2021