Winning

After a lifelong fear of missing out (FOMO), I've dropped that stuff. It started one Christmas Eve years ago as I noticed my perspective flipping between the lovely evening I was actually having and the optimal evening I was not having. Heaven and Hell chasing each other's tails, the whole enerprise absurdly needless.

"What's not happening" is empty mental torture. It's how we shave off excess joy. When we notice that we're overly happy, we draw upon the infinite fodder of "What's Not Happening" to restore our customary glum ennui. I wrote about this in "Ballasting Happiness"

All that matters - all that's real - is what is, not what's not. Playing the cards we're dealt; making lemonade from lemons; etc. Reframed to this greater sanity, depression drops away and everything begins to transform as perspective shifts.

I retain one chunk, however. No matter where I am, and no matter how well I'm eating, I'm acutely aware of what I'm missing. Here in the Portuguese boonies, it’s crippling to imagine that my annual consumption of pizza, tacos, home fries, bagels, sushi, and barbecue has dropped to mere ounces. In two years, I've had four glasses of good wine, three Chinese meals, and a mere handful of dishes prepared by trained chefs, as opposed to soulful grandmothers. I'm the biggest fan of soulful grandmothers, but once in a while a hound needs some refinement. A hound needs it all once in a while. That's the problem!

This remaining chunk is more persistant than the FOMO I've expunged, because food isn't idle caprice. The topic arises, unavoidably, several times per day, and I brim with data points and memories. So when the notion of eating pops up, there will appear a need for jerk chicken, ramen, enchiladas, etc. ad infinitum.

I've fed my diversity jones too indulgently. Having eaten so widely and so well, my yens are diverse and persistent. Feed me the best pizza in the world two meals in a row and I'll claw my way out of Naples in quest for a scrambled egg sandwich.

This makes a sleepy Portuguese fishing town an unlikely place for me to wind up in. Traditional Portuguese cooking is fantastically well-preserved. I'm eating more like a person in the 19th century than 21st. But the downside of faithful tradition (something I love and appreciate) is narrow insularity (I'm not a fan).

Via superhuman exertion, I've managed to find (or somehow conjured up???) Punjabi, Bengali, Angolan, and Moroccan chow within a 10 minute radius of my apartment, all as good as can be found anywhere. But even this oddly improbable diversity can't satisfy my fickle depravity. Hell, after living Jackson Heights for a decade, I came to view even Roosevelt Avenue (possibly the most diverse street on Earth) as limiting.

As I mentioned, I've been posting to Facebook photos of my ordinary pedestrian lunches here, sending onlookers into slobbering tizzies. So I'm eating great! And, per my Christmas Eve revelation, clarity appears as you opt out of indulgent FOMO pain. So in this clarity, I recognize that while in other respects I waver between "above" or "below" average, as an eater, I've maxed out. It's possible that no one on Earth eats better than I do. And this has been true for a long time.

There are people who live with phenomenally talented chefs, eating splendid things that would drive me insane with envy. My friend Rino enjoys the supernal gifts of the blessed Mamma Grimaldi day after day. But when he tires of her repertoire, or can't make it home for lunch, he just grabs a bite. Me, I never just grab a bite. So my overall deliciousness quotient is higher.

A billionaire can hire any chef, or hop into a private jet to satisfy any yen. But he doesn't know where to go, or what to order, like I do. He doesn't know the possibilities! And, aside from lavish sprees, he'll just grab a bite. I never just grab a bite.

While I have my gaping failures - I often curse my lousy chowhounding skills - I'm shocked to acknowledge that no one would lower their deliciousness quotient by eating in my footsteps, nor would mine rise by eating in their's.

Even in a sleepy Portuguese town.

Even sans pizza, tacos, home fries, bagels, sushi, barbecue, and refinement.

The hardest human task is to recognize when we've won. We can waste decades chasing phantoms before finally framing a "win" correctly.


You don’t need to be a grandmaster of food or whatever. Winning is in the framing. No, that’s not quite right. The anguish of not winning is in the framing. So framing away from obsessive attention to “what’s missing” is the ultimate win.