#281:Strawberries

I’ve been eating a lot of strawberries.

Before I do, I look at the Strawberry. I really look at it.

The colour. The shape. The freckled seeds on the outside. The punctuations along its contours. The small green leaves on top.

The smell hits your nose before the fruit touches your lips. The texture when you bite. Soft, juicy. It melts in your mouth.

The taste explodes in a shock, revving like a Ferrari.

How is this possible? How can this taste so good?

I imagine the homo-sapien that first tasted this fruit. They must have rolled down the hill. Their head must have blown off.

How incredible that our world can create this taste? It amazes me.

When I eat a Strawberry, I think, do I believe in God?

Because how can this be possible? Whose hand has made this?

I can’t make this. AI can’t make this.

Yes I could manipulate the land to grow it. I could build a poly tunnel or a vertical farm to recreate the conditions for it to seed and grow.

But who can make a Strawberry? Nobody.

It reminds me of a poem my Dad used to read to me. The Tyger by William Blake.

Tyger Tyger burning bright,

In the forests of the night:

What immortal hand or eye,

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Whose hand could craft a Tiger? Whose eye could conjure up a strawberry?

No human’s, that’s for sure.

I’m not about to preach to you about a big bearded man in the sky. Teenage years in a Catholic High School did enough of that to put me off that idea of him for life.

But, in the last 12 months I have developed a great appreciation for the unknown. For the mysterious veils that cloud our world.

Relaxing into this is helping me trust in a greater unfolding. Kind of like a divine plan, but again, without the big bearded man in the sky.

I still notice when I write like this I feel a tight little constriction in my gut; “but what about my own agency?”

I don’t feel like “whatever man it’ll all be OK”, relaxing back so far that I’m horizontal. It’s more like I’m standing upright, doing what I can - with a greater appreciation that there really is only so much I can control. As I’ve said before, “plans but held lightly”. Still looking ahead, still trying and looking for the right channels to be in, but aware that no matter how hard we try - life is unknown. Embracing that.

I know that life’s better when I take the time to taste the strawberry. Life’s better when I marvel at how lucky we are that we get to eat the fruit.

These little moments take me back to nature, to the present and to the unknown that’s all around us. For the rest of my day will be filled with to-do lists, meetings and tasks where I try to carve out my future from this stony face of uncertainty.

A mindful moment with a strawberry reminds that I’ll do all I can, and still, who knows what awaits us?

Now, go and buy a punnet of strawberries.

Cheers,
James x