Are There Recipes for Living?
It seems to me that we all have our ‘recipes’ for living: cooking with a recipe means handling standard ingredients in standard ways, and likewise we have relatively set routines for handling familiar situations. These ‘recipes’ can lead to very high standards of performance.
A Minimalist Approach to Life
In our household we’ve just acquired Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian [Amazon-US | Amazon-UK]. This was quite a discovery for me. It has an approach that just feels right to me; I even experienced elation as I skimmed through it when it first arrived.
Then I wondered why. Cooking is something I’ve learnt how to do (mostly) adequately. It isn’t a passion or even interest of mine. Any interest it has for me is as a means to being healthy. Cooking itself isn’t appealing. To experience elation about a cookbook was entirely unexpected.
What appealed to me was the approach. Mark names his approach ‘minimalist’. This means fresh ingredients and simple preparation. Mark then gives additions and variations to the basic minimalist dish.
This approach gave me the feeling that cooking was accessible. A feeling of, “Hey, I can do that!” I now realise that I had believed that being a good cook was beyond me — that it was too complicated and mysterious.
Mark’s minimalist approach felt right to me because it fits with my approach to living: get to the core of what something or someone is about. Once I know the core clearly, there is freedom to ‘play around’ — the equivalent of adding variations in the cookbook.
Recipes for Living
It seems to me that we all have our ‘recipes’ for living: cooking with a recipe means handling standard ingredients in standard ways, and likewise we have relatively set routines for handling familiar situations. These ‘recipes’ can lead to very high standards of performance. Dreyfus and Dreyfus (in Mind Over Machine [Amazon-US | Amazon-UK]) see expertise as a repertoire of standard situations and procedures to deal with them. And much of expertise is perception: once you know what kind of situation or problem is being dealt with, then there are usually standard solutions that can be applied fairly directly. Expertise disappears once the situation is non-standard (chess masters are no better at remembering chess pieces arranged randomly on a chess board than non-experts).
This approach can be applied to most realms of life, I think. Here are some examples of what I mean. Edward de Bono, in the CoRT Thinking Lessons, gives 60 standard procedures to use for thinking. Christopher Alexander and colleagues, in A Pattern Language [Amazon-US | Amazon-UK], gives the standard elements in architecture and urban planning. Psychotherapy has procedures to address different ‘problems’ people have — phobias, delusions, depression and so on. There are play-books for various sports; there are standard situations that drivers learn to recognise…
There are also standard procedures (recipes) that we use in our everyday lives: speaking our native language, arithmetic, social conventions, and the work we do… By the time we are adults, we have developed a very impressive recipe book on how to live our lives.
Troubleshooting
Sometimes the recipe doesn’t work: the cake doesn’t rise or the house has a roof that leaks, or a colleague gives us a hostile reaction to our normal, friendly greeting.
In this situation we can try and find what went wrong. For instance: we may have been interrupted by a phone call when making the cake and so forgot to put in the baking soda, the tiles may have been laid incorrectly on the roof, we may find out that our colleague is going through a health crisis.
When we want to know what went wrong it helps to be thoroughly familiar with the elements of the situation and the procedures we use. Doing something for the first time it is hard to know if we did everything right (whether we used all the ingredients the cake recipe called for or to see if the tiles on the roof of the house are laid correctly). It is much more likely that we will get things wrong the first time. Practice is part of acquiring any skill (though this may not mean drill, and in my view mindless drill should be used rarely if ever).
If something goes wrong in a routine situation then a wider investigation may be called for. A strange response to my normal friendly greeting could mean investigating whether my greeting was different (perhaps I’m tired or stressed), whether the other person is different in some way (stressed about something at work or at home), or whether the broader situation has changed (have I been promoted over their head and I haven’t been told yet?).
The Problem of Novelty (Non-Standard Situations)
Routine responses to standard situations only work for standard situations. In the case where I have been promoted above a colleague and not told, then the situation was actually different — so applying the routine greeting didn’t work.
The knowledge that we may be in a new situation emphasises the need for awareness. In a complex situation this can be very challenging: for instance there are varying analyses of what lead to the “Global Financial Crisis” (all the way from individual greed, to a particular kind of transaction on the stock market, to the nature of markets, to all of them mixed together), and so different proposals to avoid another one (capping CEO salaries, a bit more Keynesianism, banning of particular financial instruments, government regulation of markets, and so on).
Good Servants and Bad Masters
Most of the time, I think, our recipes serve us well. From putting on our clothes in the morning, to making breakfast, getting to work, talking with our friends, and in thousands of other ways, our recipes for living make our lives easier.
Likewise having recipes helps when teaching others: whether it is a child how to be polite, an older person how to drive, or a student how to perform in a particular discipline. It helps to know the ingredients (the elements of the situation) and the usual procedures applied to them.
The problem I think is when we use our recipes without awareness. That is, we overlook that the situation is a new one: if we had looked more closely, we may have noticed that our colleague had a different look on their face, showing they were stressed or angry perhaps.
When our recipes become our masters, we become insistent. Instead of being curious about what went wrong, we repeat our standard behaviour, or strive to prove we are correct, or do the same thing repeatedly or with more intensity.
I’m wondering do you feel that you have some good recipes for living? If so, I’d like to hear what they are: please share them with me in the comments to this post.
Other articles by Evan Hadkins
This article was last reviewed by Dr Greg Mulhauser, Managing Editor on Tuesday, 27th October 2009.
The URL of this page is:
http://counsellingresource.com/features/2009/10/27/recipes-for-living/
28th October 2009
I recently needed to suddenly change my receipe of life (I knew the cake was not growing the way I had plan)and my relationship ended in divorce. I am learning (very slowly) that are other ingredients to make my life meaningful and there I can see how a 3rd person can assist in overseeing the cake don’t get burn. I really enjoyed this post…may be b/c I love cooking. Thanks
28th October 2009
Thanks Marisol. Hope the new cake rises and provides nourishment and delight.
29th October 2009
This is a beautifully simple analogy. I’ve thought of what may be the same thing as a repertoire of responses, and a box of tools. I think I prefer the receipes analogy as it anticipates many different elements in a situation, and how one changed element can cause unexpected results.
Having said that, I tried to think of receipes for life to share, and came up with “measure three times before you cut”, which is how I deal with important decisions, and the phrase “insufficient data”, which gets stamped on a lot of puzzling situations, saving me from having to hold an opinion I can’t justify.
My childhood and early adulthood were difficult, except for 18 months spent with my lovely grandparents when I was between the ages of seven and nine. To them I attribute my awareness that members of one’s family should feel safe, accepted, cared for and happy. I could make a receipe out of my beliefs about family – respect for individuality, which includes individual tastes in food, dress and use of time, and attention to manners (really, thinking of other’s feelings) are vital. One important ingredient is emotional presence. My husband can provide that for our son, and occasionally, I can too.
Analogies are hard to get away from – I also think of family as the stake or support and the child as the tomato plant. I suppose the ties would be communication and acceptance. What do you think?
Thankyou! I very much enjoyed your article.
29th October 2009
Barbara,
I loved your analogy of the children as the tomato plant and the family as the stake or support,beautiful. I like to use analogies in my work with kids, and they are always receptive. Thanks for shearing.
:)
29th October 2009
Thanks Barbara, I love that analogy. Thanks for sharing it with us.
29th October 2009
Beautiful post, Evan. I personally believe we learn as we go, and sometimes the secret is that there’s actually no standard recipe, we try this and then we try that, and we learn to capitalize on our life experiences.
29th October 2009
Hi Mariana, I certainly think that we learn as we go. Some things are just endlessly interesting to me – I find that I am able to keep learning about them. It is a very enjoyable way to live when I have the time and space to keep pursuing them. Thanks for your comment.
2nd November 2009
Don’t forget to.
I grew up Africa where my forebears went four hunderd years ago,they cultivated prospered and fed those around them.
As kids we spoke a different language,learn to make fire with sticks and understood which medicine came from bush, and to push hard on some points of the body while you look at the stars…….this will make you better when you’re sick and well when your sad.
Ocasionally we would have visitors from Europe, especially those who were related to us somehow centuries ago,linked by geneology and surname.
They loved the remoteness and the desert where the sanddunes would roar when it settled after the heat of the day,at night the stars were so close in the black sky that you could hook them with a stick,or so it seemed.
My great wealthy uncle from Europe asked my father so many questions that he seconded someone to accompany him to find the meaning of life or recipy as he called it.
Surely he thought these ancient people living on the fringe of the desert must know what we in Europe have long forgotten.
I had to go with them because I spoke a little English so was able converse with my uncle in English and Joshua the guide in the African venacular.
We set off to see the Sangoma,the medecine man who lives 12 K’s away on the apron of the roaring sands.
We reached the Sangoma by nightfall and set up a tent for my uncle much to the amazement of the old man,he having slept all his life on the hot sand next to a fire but apart from a slight smile spoke little.
The Sangoma settled for the night and let it be know that we will speak it the morning.
That night the stars were very low and the gently purring of the sands allowed me to sleep back to back with Joshua the guide,my uncle slept in the tent.
Morning came, after eating what my uncle brought,the Sangoma drew a circle in the sand,inviting the question from this strange man who had come apparently from accross a vast ocean bigger than any dam he had seen and lives a in place where people dress in strange clothes and know many thing.
The question my uncle wanted me to ask was.
“What is the recipe for life?
Pondering the sangoma sat for a while before speaking to Joshua and me he said.
In the desert many animals live yearning for an easier life,to have water nearer instead of walking for miles,and having food like the man broughbt in bag, and to learn about questions for a book where you can find answers.
My uncle was in patient waiting anxiously
But said the old man the the recipe for life is to want nothing,expect everything and………………………..yes yes said my uncle whats he say…………..is never forget to breathe.
This was sixty years ago,things have changed some what,sadly in my opnion for the worse.
lee du ploy ( hong kong)
2nd November 2009
lee, this is a beautiful story wonderfully told. Thankyou very much.