On reaping the benefits of limitations if you're privileged like me.

Lately I've been experiencing a great joy in discovering the vegan world (I even made a zine about it). As someone who's been cooking her entire life (which went as far as obtaining a Culinary Arts degree a.k.a. six years of evening classes), and to whom moments of sharing time and tasty sustenances with other people has always meant a lot, the domain of food holds of course a special place in my heart. However, what's interesting is how limitations - even of things that you hold so dearly - can spark joy ... if you're willing to let them.

When everything is possible and the world is your oyster, I feel that things can be overwhelming. There are impossible amounts of options and possibilities. There's too much to be discovered, there's certainly too little time and this cocktail makes doing things often feel like 'not enough'. It turns a city trip into a quick - extremely polluting - alienating Instagram trip. It makes choices seem to lose their value the minute you've made them, it makes any type of consumption feel empty. It reeks of burnout.

However, when you narrow your framework, a world can open up. Yes, that IS a paradox. And when you narrow a framework for something bigger than yourself - to counter climate change; to help your community, refugees, humanity,...; to connect to others; etc. - it can really check all the boxes.

Back when I didn't give my food choices more thought than 'it should be damn tasty and maybe not too unhealthy', I'd have reacted to veganism in a 'f*ck you, hands off my individual freedoms, let me enjoy my life, MAGA hat' type of way. On the defense, concluding without much thought that limitations would mean less joy, would mean losing.

However, when I started focusing on veganism - not becoming vegan, for the record, but prioritizing the discovery of this world and all its 'why's' - it was like opening a door to an exotic psychedelically colored jungle (without bugs, bugs still scare me, but lots of birds, I believe kolibris and toucans). The joy is sparked by how the mouth gets treated (hands off, Freud) to unfamiliar things. It is sparked by the originality and incredible inventiveness of the vegan world. How fermented foods add that sexy mysterious umami, how textures play their role in fulfilling a big part of the eating experience, how ingredients can be used in a hundred more ways than you could have imagined. How being limited by seasons and what's locally or regionally grown, feels like the actual art of cooking, versus buying mangos in winter. But probably the locally grown cherry on the vegan joy-cake, is the combination of all of this and doing it for something bigger than your individual always already dying self (joy!). The injection of purpose in a domain that you love, even through limitation, is pretty much like a pupil widening hit of dopamine (Why the drug references? Idk! Shock value? Does dopamine widen pupils?).

I believe we, privileged people, experienced this type of joy in the first days of our Corona lockdowns. We were confined in many ways and in the beginning, many of us - again, this can't be stressed enough, privileged people - discovered joy in these limitations, like a weighted blanket over things. The slowing down, the new appreciation of family time, of walking and rediscovering the neighborhood, banana bread's ten seconds of worldwide fame,... . Of course we didn't continue enjoying this, but I think this had at least some positive and lasting effects on many privileged people (though maybe outweighed by the negative ones).

I think we (privileged people) have a responsibility to act in radical ways to heal things and people and to change this world for the better. As Kees Klomp wrote: we're toddlers used to getting ice cream every time we want ice cream, but any good parent knows that this is not a good formula for education (or: sustainability). Because of our privilege, we're the ones that can make room for this, we're also the ones causing the most environmental damage so yeah, there's that too.

I think that our initial gut reaction to limitations as such will always be a mopey 'that sucks'. But I also believe this can be turned around to spark joy, it 'just' takes a mind switch; considering a limitation as a gift of focus and flow and a journey of discovery. I think this works particularly well if you a) are privileged, as in: in a position to prioritize other actions than those for 'staying alive and healthy' b) do this in a domain that you're already passionate about c) do it for a cause that is greater than yourself. So if you're crazy about traveling for example; what if you took the climate impact of air travel seriously (you know you've been avoiding this inconvenient truth) and discovered new ways of traveling, moving, new destinations, new ways of being present in those destinations,... What if your love for cycling could have more than individual benefits. Or clothing; what if you managed to become so creative or knowledgeable in that field that you weren't responsible anymore for women's oppressions and deaths in Bangladesh, you consumed less, and feel even better about your style. What if your vegan barbecue slayed more than any other. What if you chose just one thing that you're really good at and focused for a while on the many things you could do with it to change things for the better,... .

I think - and I learned this at Shaved Monkey from the wonderful Robin ibens - it's key (and again, our very urgent responsibility) that we move through what we love, where the energy is already so naturally present, and then bend that sh*t for the better. Change will not come through trying to adopt things that we absolutely loathe. I do think that once you get a good taste of this purpose dopamine, the things that you loathed (like a necessary consuming less overall) might become very much less loathsome. And once THAT happens: good luck with not becoming a mildly to strongly irritating joy ranter (enchantée & namaste, poor followers).