JetUNsetter

Whilst on holiday back home this summer, I remembered a recipe by my granny that I had not had in a very long time. It’s super simple and easy and I wanted to experience it again under the sun and the breeze you find in the Mediterranean.

It involves going to a bakery and buying raw dough. Like bread just before it’s baked. That sounds extremely simple, no? So I wake up determined and make my way to the local bakery in the village really early in the morning. Bread is baked early so there is a sleep sacrifice to make to catch it raw in fact.

I am really happy and I meet the girl at the till. I explain what I need. Her face turns confused and her immediate reply is that “we don’t sell raw dough”. I explain that I understand that it is not a product on the shelf but I am willing to pay for an unbaked loaf at the price of a baked one. She keeps refusing the purchase. I am really not ready to not have my granny’s delicacy on that day so press harder with the obvious question: why? Why would not give me a raw loaf?

She can, of course, come up with no plausible answer. I can only assume that since the ask is out of norm then she is just afraid or confused to grant it. The No in this occasion seems easier. Takes away any calculation of risk linked to the unknown, the weird ask of mine. She still realises my ask is simple so goes back to the bakers inside the shop to check. I can hear a man saying “sure why not. Takes away the hustle of the baking”.

She comes back relaxed this time, her face turned back to the friendly girl at the till I meet every morning when I go to the that shop and she gives me the dough. I understand she needed to share the fear of the unknown and the responsibility. What I am still perplexed about is the No stage. I mean, she could have gone with anything along the lines of “I have never sold an unbaked loaf before, let me check what I can do”, instead of that blunt “No we can’t sell what you ask”. Her original dismissive reply was perhaps helpful to manage her fear, discomfort, stress or whatever my weird task inflicted on her but bottom line was a lie. A dysfunctional, unnecessary lie.

I guess this is what stress does to us. Makes us resort to a non existent reality. Instead of facing fear, we lose ourselves in a parallel universe where we talk ourselves out of it but into an imaginative comfort. Somewhere in this girl’s head, there was the non realistic expectation that if she pushes me away I will in fact go away. It was only when reality hit her back (I was not leaving that place without my loaf) that she had to adjust to a realistic problem solving.

As I was eating my nanny’s delicacy that morning in the end, I was a happy bunny of course but started thinking of the dysfunctional No I have heard in more critical circumstances than that and, most importantly, my own dismissal to other people’s rational asks of me. Escaping reality is so damn easy, denying emotions is so comfortable but leaves us in a total void… Please help me make sense of this one too and don’t say No if you don’t need to …