Perpetual Stew

For the last several years, I’ve been in a state of perpetual stewing.

By “stewing,” I mean deep in thought and emotionally agitated in a way that causes me to cycle and spin. When I feel turmoil in my life and the lives of people I love, it shows up as pain in my body. I see a bubbling of discord in local communities and often well up with tears. I listen to news stories of the world on fire and feel the heat rise within me.

Despite all this freezing and burning, there have been very few moments when the proverbial porridge has tasted just right.

I’ve always believed in finding the midpoint, the balance, and the gentle roll.

Where’s that midpoint now?

I know that small actions have the potential to cascade into waves of good, and I often remind myself that we have more control over the events around us than we think.

It starts with individual action.

But how do you know where to take the first step when everything feels so pulled apart?

The answer lies in doing things that allow us not only to see each other but can be easily replicated.

For example, apologies begin to bring two people back together, and this is something everyone can do. We all have stuff to be sorry for, and when someone receives an apology, it is often an open door for them to make their own apology when the time comes.

Sharing knowledge is another way to bridge the gap between people because it not only helps the recipient of the information and insight, but it also reminds them that they, too, have “superpowers” to share with others.

Including people in events where they might not have been invited not only creates a sense of belonging, but the new attendee often broadens the experience of people in their lives by talking about their new perspective.

Being open about your own life’s challenges makes it ok for others to be open as well.

I reported on my research on this topic with Dr. Serena Chen of Berkeley in my book, The Parlay Effect: How Female Connection Can Change the World.

The other day, while listening to a podcast, I heard another example of a world-changing, restorative opportunity to bring us closer together, and it’s both literal and figurative in its application.

It’s called perpetual stew.

Perpetual Stew is a community food, cooked in a single pot, with contributions provided by everyone who lives nearby. New ingredients are added daily, and the pot is never completely emptied. In bountiful times, everyone contributes an array of ingredients – from their gardens, from hunting and foraging, from fishing and from nature. They bring extra loaves of bread, rice, or noodles if that’s all they have.

Because the pot is never fully emptied, it’s still a nutritious and flavorful broth in leaner times. In abundant times, it’s a thick and filling explosion of flavor.

In Akakusa, Japan, the same oden broth has been served since 1945.

The Wattana Panich Restaurant in Bangkok, Thailand, has been cooking the same pot of beef and goat noodle soup for over 49 years.

Chef Enrique Olvera has been simmering perpetual mole madre for 2800 days.

Social media personality Annie Rauwerda makes a vegetarian stew in her Bushwick, Brooklyn apartment, where attendees of her dinners bring their own ingredients as part of the weekly ritual.

To keep everyone healthy, most perpetual stew masters suggest boiling the ingredients at least twice a day and simmering them the rest of the time.

When I heard about this perpetual stew, it reminded me of the children’s story, Stone Soup.

In that tale, a wise older man travels to a small, poor village and offers to make soup for them out of a stone. With gratitude, the villagers bring him whatever small items they have in their gardens and pantries (as well as bread and butter), and it's all added to the pot. The villagers, who were barely surviving on their individual harvests, are soon nourished communally by the soup that started from a worthless stone.

The moral? We can have more together than we can have separately, and collaboration will get us through the leaner moments.

So when you are in a moment of agitation about something personal or as a member of this shared planet and you don’t know how to move forward, remember that it all begins with one action that could get much bigger things simmering.

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