The Nuance Behind Tomato Sauce

Jacques de Villiers – writing quest: Article 45/365

I remember my first trip to Italy and the amazing food. I battled with the food at first. For decades, I ruined my taste buds with all the sauces I put on my food like tomato sauce, Tabasco, and chilly sauce.

I was used to * All Gold Tomato Sauce and its ’36 tomatoes in a bottle’. Not freshly crushed tomatoes in a bowl.

Initially, the food tasted bland, and I was always reaching for the salt. After a week my taste buds became attuned to the nuance of the food, and a whole new world of flavour opened up to me. 

Perhaps we ‘tomato sauce’ our own lives. We hide our feelings by using things like alcohol, drugs, sex, binge-watching Netflix, and similar activities.

We’re trying to suppress and repress the *goggas so that we don’t have to deal with them. You’re smart enough to know that doesn’t work. They’re going to surface somewhere, and when you least expect them. 

If you’ve ever felt negative emotions like being passive-aggressive, intolerant, unkind, shamed, shaming, depressed, complaining, apathetic, guilty, angry, and sorry for yourself, those are the goggas. 

In my experience, I’ve found that if I bring any negative feeling into the open and observe it without judgement, it eventually dissipates. Sometimes quickly and sometimes I wrestle with something for weeks.  And, mostly, for me, it’s hard. I’m so tempted to avoid anything unpleasant that I want to desperately ‘tomato sauce’ it. 

When the negative things disappear I become lighter (light).

And, of course, when my taste buds are more attuned to nuances and subtleties, things just taste better. And, this leads to gratitude and awe. I am more attuned to noticing the miracles in and around me. It’s heady and delicious. 

How does one play in the world of nuance and bring out the magnificent flavour that is this life? 

The only way I know how to do it is through meditation. It’s in the stillness that my consciousness calibrates, my gratitude grows, and my awe awakens.

Join me on this adventure from unconsciousness to consciousness using the Map of Consciousness (link in comment section). Let’s figure this out together, you and I.

* For my international readers – goggas is the Afrikaans colloquialism for insects. And, tomato sauce is ketchup.