SALT AND INTENTION

 FOR PRINCESS PIRATE

I am on the train today and trying to read a book for book club. As I have told you, I don’t like it and I’m not sure I will finish. It doesn’t draw me right now like Rick Riordan’s series on Jason does. So I just finished a page and a half, I am already off on a tangent based on this fact: The communist leader of China named Mao, in attempt to improve literacy, simplified the shared characters of Chinese and Japanese to a total of 40,000. This is a number that seems, to me as an English speaker, attainable. But it’s an investment of time, and it would still take a lot of time, so most of us will not learn them. Honestly most of us won’t even try.

Sometimes I think, at least I am one of the those who have tried and fail. I think this a good thing, but it is only the first step, and it’s important that I not feel too proud, because it is truly only a good thing if a keep on trying after I fail. 

The book Salt is explaining the origin of soy sauce. The Chinese salted their fish to keep longer, and this is the basis of Asian cooking. The word is Jiang. The salt and fish had soya added to it. Eventually the fish was left out of it, and it was called Jiangyu. After the Chinese, Japan started using their own soya sauce and called it Shoyu. They industrialized it so we probably got it from Japan before China. We call it soya sauce, and despite being two different words in two different languages, the character for both Chinese and Japanese is identical. 

It got me to think about the idea that it takes 10,000 times to do something well. It’s actually necessary that you do it with intention, and, therefore, improve what you are doing, but that’s another story. I started to do the math. If you or I do something every day, that’s 365 days a year. In three years that’s a thousand times. Imagine how easy it is for 3 years to go by without doing anything. It takes a tremendous amount of intention, planning, and action, but it is easily started. 30 years every day, you get to 10, 000 times. Actually, it’s 27 years, 145 years. 

The truth is, like usual, somewhere in between. Look at what you did in your first three years. Sure, you walk and run better than ever, but you were walking and talking and running and eating and laughing and learning in that short period of time, with leaps and bounds of improvement. One year of every day becomes three years, and three years of intention is a remarkable improvement. 

So, Princess Pirate, start something today. Do it again tomorrow. Plan what you want for your future and work towards it. It may take a long time, but anything is possible if you start it today!