This blog relates to week 39
and the search for what need I’m meeting with my activity. These last two weeks, I haven’t been
able to bake. I fell ill with
bronchitis and have been bedridden with little energy. This was quite timely, as it gave me an
opportunity to literally answer the question Mary posed: “What if you couldn’t bake? What need would you have to fill?” Although I mainly bake to give gifts,
this week I’ve been missing my scrumptious oat cookies that are wheat-free (to
suit my intolerance to wheat). I
usually make a batch in the weekend to munch throughout the week.
So, one of the needs for
baking in my life is to consume, to eat.
Another need it fills is the need to give gifts. Both of these needs are part of that we
call “labour”, the never-ending cycle of life. Thomas F. Green writes of the endless cycle of “gathering
and consuming” (1968, p. 17), of the passage of life governed by seasons and
death, then rebirth. Green defines
labour as being about necessity and nourishment. The oat cookies form part of my weekly sustenance, while my
baking for gifts is also part of my sustenance, as a person who is connected
with other beings in this world, celebrating with them their ups and downs,
birthdays, births, deaths, marriages.
These celebrations also occur on an endless cycle, as I was reminded
when my friend’s brother died unexpectedly a few days ago. My friend lives in France, so I sent a
card rather than bake, but had she lived around the corner, baking plus a card
would have felt like the right thing to do. Baking fills my need to participate in life with those I
love, both on a practical nutritious level, and a more spiritual level.
There is also something
satisfying about producing something to eat, as Hannah Arendt puts it:
The blessing of labour is that effort and gratification follow each
other as closely as producing and consuming the means of subsistence, so that
happiness is a concomitant of the process in itself, just as pleasure is a
concomitant of the functioning of a healthy body (1958, p. 108).
References:
Arendt, H. (1958). The human condition. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.
Green, T. F. (1968). Work, leisure, and the American schools.
New York: Random House
Hi Hannah! I really enjoyed how you wrote about labour here. It really is a never ending cycle of life. Baking is such a perfect gift for the occasions that occur in that cycle of life. Personally I have enjoyed baking since I was a kid and have such fond memories of baking with mum and my siblings. It's still something I do, either baking for myself or as a gift. It's really great to see that baking is still such a strong and important activity in other peoples lives too.
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