Discovery of the Unexpected & Added Growth
The weather is now finally turning cooler; the summer is and feels gone. Fall has arrived and the feeling of change is in the air. When the seasons change I often feel inspired to discover, especially in the kitchen with new seasonal items coming into our lives it seems like a great time to discover and rediscover something “different”. For me this something different keeps my mind alive, leaves the stagnation for others and inspires me to go further into life and finding the “unexpected” which is ultimately I believe what feeds my growth, growth in my body, mind and spirit as well as in my cooking repertoire. I feel like when my cooking is easy and open, than my entire being is as well. It’s true one does not have to travel across the world to find this openness in oneself, this invitation to attract the unexpected. I guess I am simply lucky that traveling around the world is part of my life and therefore and extra catalyst for my growth and discovery of the unexpected in my life and on my plate.
This past month I had the privilege of traveling to Israel. As many of you know this is somewhat of a normal commute for me, typically traveling there about 4-5 times per year over the past 8 years. My travels to Israel have always been for my business. This fall my travels were somewhat unexpected to Israel. After closing down my fruit and vegetable company months back I hadn’t imagined that I would be traveling back to Israel for a long, long time. But then the unexpected came into my life, an invitation of sorts to go back inside the world of produce, the invitation was both exciting and frightening. Exciting because for sure after an in-depth career in produce for as long as I had, I did in a sense miss it and the prospect of doing something I had focuses most of my adult life on again in order to make income, was extremely inviting. But the fear was also present as I had become submerged so in depth in my business that I had lost my personal self. All that I did and tried to achieve was for others, growers, customers, and the overall perception of success at my job, took over my soul. I have in the last years slowly pulled myself out of that way of life or way of not actually living and my fear was that I was not able to control myself in that world, as one grower said, its addictive this produce business. So with a great deal of thought and introspective reasoning, I decided to venture back into this world that almost killed me. But what was unusual was the unexpected pairing I encountered. I guess the best way to describe it is that old saying you attract what you spend your energy thinking about. So because I wanted to be in this world of produce in a more subtle and sorter way, this is the exact situation I attracted and thus I think for me this new venture is finally more fitting than any other venture I have taken on in produce to date. So this unexpected time of my life is exciting and Israel came next with even more unexpected rewards and thus even more growth, not to mention as usual some of the most amazing food I have ever eaten!
I typically travel to Israel alone and because I go so often “tourism” isn’t typically on my agenda, I have done most the tourism in the past and grew somewhat complacent in my travels there, seeking food and the solace of the sea in most my free time, not to mention a few fine gentleman callers! But on this occasion I had a traveling companion, and not any traveling companion a woman from the new company I am venturing into a cooperation with who is one of the few woman professionally that I have met that is extremely similar to me. She is my senior and she has much more experience in certain realms of the business than I but in general we are extremely similar. She has been in charge and responsible for a large sector of the company she works for, she travels all over the world often and alone doing business with mainly men and has this amazing passion and drive to help growers of cultures all over the world. She is trained corporately and is well respected in the industry. I had known her in passing in the industry for some years but on this amazing trip I got to know her and really understand that I am not alone in this business as I had thought I was for so long and I probably was alone in my business, which is blamed for the way my business started, essentially I was alone.
Not only did I find out so many (pleasant) unexpected things about this woman, we (me and my fellow Israeli produce peeps) also had the pleasure of ‘selling” this woman on Israeli culture. Since it was her first time in Israel and she was about to start a long term relationship with the Israelis, the same one I have had over the last 9 years, the culture, their world was important for her to see and unexpectedly I discovered my connection again to this place I had been traveling for almost 25% of my life!. For me this “tourism” allowed me to discover so much unexpectedness in myself, not only the rediscovery of my connection and love for Israel but I got to witness so much that I wouldn’t have seen on my own, so much that I got to indulge in, that had she not been with me, I would have passed right by. Also I have found that the more I travel alone the less I do. It’s kind of like this circle. At first traveling alone is an absolute pleasure, however after time, it’s well, lonely. And the loneliness made me a little stagnant in my travels so I want to take notice and appreciate with full gratitude the fact that traveling with this women brought me back into my discovery mode, my awareness of the unexpected! This unexpected discovery brings one always closer to the or their truth and for one to discover this, you must be looking so I was helped by this lady, encouraged to be looking again. The reality in the end is the unexpected can be found anywhere just look around, which is much harder to do than we realize!
