Hintegedanka
William Blake said the fool who persists in his folly will become wise and last night I was speaking to someone who is funding his passion through his job – in other words, your job doesn’t have to be your passion or your do good or feel good work. Last night, we had friends over for a wine and small bite round table – everyone’s mandate was to bring their favorite wine and the reason why. We had some good stories, from a guy in Sicily who grows his grapes au natural, to a Tempranillo that skipped like a rock from one lifetime to the next to the next and two wine stories centered around family.
We cooked some yummy food too – a goat cheese with ginger, granny smith apple and pistachio appetizer care of Paula La Duc in San Francisco, tuna with truffles over caramelized onions all the way from Zahara de los Atunes, mushroom toast from Fog City Diner, crabcakes a la Martha Stewart, vodka tomatoes from James Beard, asparagus prosciutto bundles, Pakistani beef over polenta from Mahdur Jaffrey, and last but not least, miniature pineapple upside down cakes from Cake Bakery here in New Orleans. Yum!
Today I was speaking to a friend who said that he shut down his old business because it forced him into a lifestyle of stress and anxiety that he didn’t want to shoulder and he had a lot of ideas of what he would do next but one of them was nagging him and it is what he ended up doing. Similarly, I’ve had a nagging feeling that has turned out to be accurate recently and now I’m opening up to a life filled with possibilities. One of my dinner companions last night said he knew I would land on my feet and I believe that – now.
Hintegedanka is the German word – the Germans have words for everything – that means the thought concealed way back behind your intellect that has a gnawing persistence. Those things that clamor to be expressed either through writing, or work, or what have you, have a way of giving birth to themselves. But meanwhile, while you are trying to answer big life questions, it’s nice to sit around a table with a bunch of friends and share wine and food and stories.
My advice though is when you get a dose of Hintegedanka – heed it! Don’t fear it.