What Freedom from Western Culture Has Given Me
Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday, until now.
As an atheist Jew who went to both Hebrew and Catholic schools growing up, I could never find myself on the calendar. My dad texts me to remind me it’s Passover. I blank. Is that the day we eat salty hardboiled eggs and matzah, or the day we eat hamentashen? I don’t connect strongly enough with my Jewish identity to remember.
My mind conveniently helps me forget things. When my relationship with my mother was at its worst, I would, to my own bewilderment, forget to bring important documents she had asked for on multiple occasions. Every time I came to the house, sans papers, we’d fight, and I’d leave. Thanks, brain.
I wish I could forget Christmas. I’ve never liked it. The colors are garish. The flavors and scents are obscene. Seriously, why on the coldest days of the year would we eat peppermint, something that makes your mouth even colder? Cinnamon is objectively disgusting (go ahead, cancel me), and it’s in every pie, latte, and perfume. The music is garish. Just hearing it makes me angry. Call me Scrooge. Call me Grinch. Just don’t call me with your Christmas music background hold music.
Every public space I walk into is a full out assault on my senses: sound, taste, smell all razor wiring themselves through my brain in screaming dissonance.
In the US, that is.
In China, I am free of US holiday hell. The first year, around Thanksgiving time, this hurt. I was nostalgic. It hit me deep in the homesickness and prompted me to make a Thanksgiving-dupe meal for myself at home. But, times have changed, and this year, with the perspective two years of living outside of the US under my belt, I can honestly say I was brainwashed into thinking Thanksgiving food is good food, and chances are you are too.
Whoa whoa whoa, brainwashed is a strong word, you say. I said what I said. The Pavlovian conditioning has been broken. Nowadays, when I see pictures of turkey, sweet potato casserole, and green bean casserole on my screen, my mouth is dry. It’s boring. One South-Indian chef described it as “salt and pepper food”, something a child could make.
In the same way that I’ve had enough pizzas in my life, and most of them not that great, that, barring a trip to Italy, I could happily never eat pizza again, I think I’m over Thanksgiving food. And Christmas food.
So, I’m only eating Chinese food now? I’m stuffing my face with Chinese roast goose and mapo tofu at every opportunity? Well, sometimes. To be honest, I did spend the first year doing that, but I’m also not in that place anymore. What this experience has given me is a detachment from the idea that my surroundings are me. It has allowed me to craft a lense, a tool that lets me curate my own purposeful being.
I have returned to my own center. I cook at home. I buy the clothes that suite my style. I am careful and choosy with what I allow to influence me, and how deeply and permanently that influence goes. I play, for sure. I love to expermiment and try things. I pick things up and put them back down. But what remains, always, is me. I’m not picky for an evening out, but I am picky for a lifetime in.
Short one today — more later. Love you.
