Opinion Piece.

What is the point of a Chef’s life? What is the evolution of Culinary?

Being a chef often feels mechanical, draining, and abusive. A career and life cast in shadow.

Chefs are known to leave the profession with PTSD and many with a drinking problem.

I stood in the kitchen one beautiful spring day and asked myself why. Why?

I even selfishly cried, (pity on the Chef).

I have been a chef for over 20 years. I have worked in dozens of restaurants, hotels, and catering. I hold a culinary degree and several advanced certificates. The passion that a student begins with wanes quickly after 12 hour shifts and meager wages. We spend weekends, nights, and holidays away from out family and children, and for what?

What is the purpose of any life? Why are we here? If you believe in this concept, that one does have a purpose. If you ask yourself these types of questions. It does not matter much if you are a chef, or work on Wall Street. If you are a dishwasher or CEO. For many, they do not ask, and for many more they have no answer.

I think about these things a lot. A whole lot.

In my mind, I imagine the system that we live in. Earth, biological systems, family structures, the solar system. The macro and the micro. Let us not forget, animals, fungi, plants, bacteria, and yes even viruses. Everything a living breathing symbiosis, and what is everything doing? Everything has its place and these systems crumble when there are disturbances above and so also below.

Perfectly balanced. Mutually co-arising.

It seems to me that everything’s place is to evolve itself and its system. To reduce the friction of existence, to diminish entropy. To align with creation. This in turn stimulates the smaller and the larger systems that all contain each other and evolve as well.

Other living beings do not seem to ask what is life's purpose.

No they just are, and that in itself is enough.

Humans on the other hand have a special ability, and that is to evolve through intent.

We may choose any kind of life, chef,  athlete, mother, but if we forget that our purpose if to evolve we also forget that our lives matter and that our intention affects everything that exists.

So standing in the kitchen this morning sniffling, that I must cook to pay the bills, instead of finishing school or working on one of my more “ important” projects. I asked myself … What is the point of a Chef's life? What is the evolution of Culinary?

This brought a smile to my face. Because I live in a system that is in desperate need of change. We are living in a food system that is dying, that is collapsing. This is the system that sustains 8 Billion people on Earth, and if this system collapses, then so do we.

My mind opened to this suddenly. I saw a clearing, a wide-open prairie of grass. Our purpose is to evolve. To see each other as friends, neighbors, family, living together under one beautiful, endless, expansive horizon. Together we must see our mission for what it is. To live a life of creation and harmony.

Yes, I am a chef, mother, cemetarian, and farmer. My job is not to feed you beautiful food. My job is to evolve culinary for the changing of our times. To create new systems that feed the people, soil, and animals. To feed our bodies, as well as our souls. Again I am in tears, but this time it is from clarity, and love. For this life, I am forever at your service. Find the divinity in all that you do. You are a part of a revolution, you are doing exactly what you came here to do.