Cooked Under Pressure
One of my favorite holiday gifts was the Instant Pot. It’s a modern day pressure cooker, and it makes food prep a dream. What used to take hours to simmer on a stove top or in a slow cooker, now takes less than two. Pressure builds for about 30 minutes, then the actual cooking takes about an hour.
And that’s it.
It all tastes great. Just about the same as other traditional cooking methods. That’s right, just about the same…
It’s not the same. It’s food that’s been cooked under pressure. The whole purpose is to bring that dinner to the table fast. The entire idea is speed.
And that’s the problem with pressure, it’s all too fast. It’s designed to make things go and happen quickly. It’s great for certain things: transportation, combustion, weather, etc. But for life in general, I think it’s terrible.
I’ve been stopping lately to notice the pressures in my life, and I suggest you do the same. First, there are two kinds of pressure: internal and external. Internal pressures are those forces we place on ourselves; they are what drive us to start, stop, and continue activities aimed at our personal goals or challenges.
External pressures are those forces others or the world places on us. Deadlines, assignments, work tasks, projects, meetings, and on and on.
When I stop and look at these two kinds of pressures, one common thing stands out: they are all arbitrary. They are all simply buttons on our individual instant pots that, once pressed, cook us to some degree or another. But with our internal pressures, we control the pressing of buttons.
Going further, we as individuals have the power to press those buttons when we like, push them with as much force as we like, or set the time and intensity for as long as we like. Key word: time. We will come back to this.
For the external pressures, we have slightly less control, because others (and the world) are pressing our buttons. The world is setting our timers and level of intensity, and thus waiting for the outcome. Where we can control this adding of external pressure is by creating boundaries. Saying, “I’ll get back to you.” “Not at this time.” “Not under these conditions.” Or simply, “No.”
As for time, pressure lessens when we all have more time. Whether internal or external, when we give ourselves time, when we go back to stove top and slow cooking, the pressure goes away, and well, the food just tastes better.
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Photo by KWON JUNHO on Unsplash