Weekend Thoughts

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

Today, I drove past “Wonder Seafood”, one of the best Asian restaurants in town and found that the parking lot was empty. Just one or two months ago, the business was picking up, but now it seemed in steep decline again, either because Rutgers University students are gone for the summer, or because of the new BA5 variant of COVID.

I hope the restaurant will not go under. It has withstood the pandemic for two and half years by now, and I wish it can rally its strength to fight new challenges. I have to admit despite all the bad news about the gas price, the inflation, the new variant, the plight of small businesses, the community here seems to be more optimistic than I imagined. People still believe in toils and diligence, which are their tool (sometimes the only tool) to keep life’s disappointment at bay. People still believe in saving, especially the cost of air-conditioning during the summer.

Probably by now we have all understood that we will never be as secure, content, or satisfied as we wish to be, but we continue to believe that our industriousness will put us one step closer to a better life, no matter how elusive the better life is. We are so blindly diligent, blindly clipping our coupons–we blindly imagine that our age-old saving strategy can outrun the runaway inflation.

It is said there are more people growing vegetables in their backyard or in rented plots of land from Rutgers. There are less people spending serious money on makeups, which has caused the shutdown of the Shiseido cosmetic store (a Japanese brand) near me. More people go on fishing trips to score some fish for their weekend barbecue party. Although I have to say I am very skeptical about the fish caught in New Jersey, considering how polluted the water is around the greater New York area. And of course nobody heeded my warnings, and those who ate the polluted fish have since lived as healthy as ever.

I hope that this relentless enthusiasm that I have witnessed is not just for survival, not just for existence. I hope not, but I feel that it is–such a waste of human energy for such an essential but uninspiring goal. That’s the skill of survival passed on to us through centuries, crystalized in the process of doing what we are doing, and enjoying the labor and the results. That’s just cooking–so much preparation and clean up for a very brief period of gastronomical delight.

We have all tried to have a sense of freedom, to get rid of the caged feeling etc. I have really made an effort to achieve that, but only succeeding, like what Pooja says here, in getting a bigger cage.