USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving.
Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free.
I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these."
"They just come with the table, man."
They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner.
This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat.
I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared.
"Did we…?"
"Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless."
Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined.
My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude."
Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man.
I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy.
Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived.
I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most.
Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.
Get plastic surgery if you want. Do gear if you want. Body mod if you want.
But don't do those things, claim that you didn't, and then act like anyone who points it out is crazy.
Tomorrow is 40.
I've lived for years rejecting myself as a whole person for "reasons." Those really boil down to "I'm not worthy or good enough" and amount to self-sabotage.
I've recently made some changes to live more as a more complete person. LFG
@multijuegos1315 Started trying to do things that I like to do because I like to do them and not because I can somehow convince myself that they are productive, are beneficial to someone else, or that they take nothing away from anyone else in my life (including time or money).
What's an album that you absolutely love that pretty much no one knows about?
Mine is Ghosts and Spirits, by Phil Woodward. It's a retelling of C.S. Lewis' "The Great Divorce" as a series of varied styles of music.
It's phenomenal.
What's yours?
@gremlininmywall I haven't been reading the Absolute series, but I'm following it from the sidelines. I think it's one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time.