The delicious world of Ramen-free living

I was washing dishes today when it hit me that I have no plans to ever eat Top Ramen again.

I could have gotten sad about this; I suppose it's a sad thought, but I decided to try to see the bright side. I thought about all the times I got overwhelmed as a child because my little brain was overloaded with all the things there are to think about. I'd just sit and stress: "There isn't even enough time to think about everything, much less do everything!" How I've repeatedly had to fight down the panic that I wasn't where I belonged in life, because the possibilities feel endless and I can ever only be one place at once. I read yesterday that self-motivated learners discover this equation through the proliferation of free online tutorials: anytime + anywhere = never.

I guess what I'm saying is having unlimited options has never kept me happy or effective. It's actually caused me a fair amount of misery over the years. So when I find a closed door, though my first instinct is to rail and pout, maybe a more accurate response should be relief. So I can't eat Ramen. There are literally thousands of other things I can eat, delicious things that won't give me a stomachache or headache. In this, my suffocatingly endless meal choices have slimmed by one, the weight of constant choice lifted by a small but measurable amount.

"Each time a door closes, the rest of the world opens up. All we need to do is stop pounding on the door that just closed, turn around--which puts the door behind us--and welcome the largeness of life that now lies open to our souls. The door that closed kept us from entering a room, but what now lies before us is the rest of reality." - Let Your Life Speak by Parker J. Palmer (I can't overstate how much I enjoyed and found meaning in this book)

Reality--and the world of real food--is large enough that placing limits, even substantial ones, will not render it stupid and boring. There are still plenty of choices I can make. Eating (more or less) Paleo has given me more than it has taken away, though from the outside looking in it sounds impossible or perhaps somewhat masochistic (at least that's how it originally sounded to me). "How can you enjoy life without cupcakes?" It's as easy as enjoying life without stomachaches, daily afternoon exhaustion, aggressive cravings.

I may eat Ramen again, and I may not. But life is too large and wonderful to spend much mental energy here, apart from a flash of gratitude that I have food to eat daily, and the privilege of making choices about what I eat. Now if only I could find the silver lining in my current limitation of having no home air conditioning, a much more pressing matter of today.