A SEAT AT THE TABLE: The EXHILIRATING ACT OF STILLNESS

“You got the light, count it all joy

You got the right to be mad

But when you carry it alone, you find it only getting in the way

They say you gotta let it go”,

Solange’s music is a reminder of coming back home after running yourself exhausted, from seeking an offer at tables that refuse to acknowledge you. A spiritual mantra for homecoming, as is my philosophy to food, The Sorghum Agenda.

I have spent a lifetime trying to feel seen, and lost sight of my own vision in the process.

I spent the bulk of my culinary studies trying to show off all my French techniques, mastering Italian cuisine and centering Western practices, while wondering why I never felt at home in the food presented. It hit me like a ton of bricks when I realised that my identity within food was based on the idea that one day, I would matter, while watching the slow reel of my cultural identity reduced to "other".

"Nothing without intention. Do nothing without intention", roars my speaker. Solange comes back to remind me that I have to be intentional about creating spaces for me, for us; through me, by us. F.U.B.U.

I realise, in the quite resignation of my loud dismissal within the spaces I find myself in, that I have lost my intentionality, my purpose- I have become complacent to the cycles that have led to the very frustrations I hold. No contentment without intention.

Nothing is intentional about me being glued to the constant blackhole of growing insecurities and lost esteem wrapped in the beautiful aesthetics of social media trends of what food I should be posting to have social validation. Nothing is intentional about me going through page after page trying to spend more to look less so I can feel more whole. There’s no intent in the unconscious seeking of validation from people I couldn’t point out in the street on a bright Summer’s day. Or the industries that erase me from the narrative. Nothing.

Beyond the aesthetically pleasing, Tumblr-esque visuals of what representation looks like, I don’t fill my own cup, of seeing myself, and suddenly the façade of what looked like confidence starts to drop.

It immediately falls on me that perhaps the best change is the one I make, if I seek it hard enough. Breaking glass ceilings, and the likes.

I fall into my ways, I crumble. A rise. (Thank you, Solange).

In letting myself break down all I have been taught and practice, I embarked on an inner vision; searching beyond myself to those before me, to find my way back to myself- and that changed my life!

The rise of convenience has been to the sacrifice of our relationship with ourselves, our community, our food. We have become more content with outsourcing our humanities to artificial intelligence, reducing eating to a chore, limiting human interaction and wondering why we feel hollow in our sense of identity, community and nourishment.

When we search the vast internet for definitions on what our living should look like, half of the advice is filled with judgement. If not judgement, we are met with a long list of instructions on what we have to first attain before we embrace ourselves (often paired with an expensive price tag), before we are deserving of our love. Want to eat cake? Take this drug first. Want to be happy? Lose weight. Want to love yourself? Buy this long list of expensive things you  don’t need. Want friends? Spend every moment online. Want to find community? You have to be positive 24/7 or else you’re simply not healed enough to deserve it. Is it even time spent with your friend if you don’t post an aesthetic picture, of the meal you can't describe but are just happy it will look amazing on Insta?

Some forms of internet prescribed advice, masked as high-level listicles to save you time, can be so toxic that you don’t realise being pulled in, until you start seeing yourself through filtered-coloured glasses of your loneliness, at a table you did not even want to sit by. When you find yourself unable to recognise the reflection staring back in the mirror. 

In Sula, Toni Morrison writes that “Living totally by the law and surrendering totally to it without questioning anything sometimes makes it impossible to know anything about yourself.” To know self is to question what you are told, to exist within an identity you create for yourself. To love yourself on your own terms. And you know what? That is exactly what I decided to do.

In 2019, in the whirlwind of a tumultuous spiral into an emotional blackhole, I decided to redefine what that looked like for me. I created what I called #NourishMyHappy. What began as a transparent month of a mindful journey, in taking back time to refill my cup and finding a routine that nourished my body to replenish my source, became the continuous daily decision to choose myself. To see myself. To connect with people like me.

It made sense to me that since I am always posting on my social media, how appropriate would it be to use my platform to create an accountability check-in for my journey? What I did not imagine was the radical community that grew from it, with people finding more pause in how they fed into their bodies- mind, body, gut and soul. We reshaped how we spoke of ourselves, how we perceived our food and the intentional slowness that came with old indigenous practice.

See, in the midst of looking for myself, I realised how radical it was to constantly decide to choose self, especially in a world that is so bent on defining who you are for you. Without even realising, I built a new table and simply invited people to join me. We ate soul food. We found soul.

How did I do it? It all started with a plate. A grain, truly. My ancestors.

I am constantly working, rushing, chasing some deadline of sorts, eating as I move, that I forgot to be mindful of the smaller things. You’d think as someone constantly working in a kitchen I’d have it all figured out, the irony doesn’t escape me. In the rush of everything, the simpler things for ourselves become dismissed without so much of a thought. Don’t believe me? When was the last time you ate without distraction? No phone, no tv, no book- just you, your food and your senses?

Where you saw your food and truly experienced each bite? Seems simple, it isn’t. Which is why I had to come back to self, to recognise what was missing- patience.

Traditional food insists on a quiet slowness that is lost in our current age where convenience is key, and everyone wants instant gratification. Two-minute risotto? Yes, please! Heat to eat? Take my money! Airfyer leg of lamb, if you will. Well, you get the idea. This also applies to the amount of time and effort we invest in the understanding of our food. More so, in how we build community and identity within our food systems. How we consider the ingredients and their source, and the amount of connection we build with the foods we consume. 

When you fully look at the sociological studies around the indigenous food systems of our African ancestors, you start seeing an intentionality that truly requires patience and stillness, and places emphasis on respect for the food. Food as ritual, as an honour.

In a report by the Special Rapporteur to the United Nations for the Right to Health, Dr Tlaleng defines food as, “an expression of both self and community, embodying cultural, political and economic values. It is often a vehicle for transmitting cultural traditions and identities, especially when a group is marginalised by race, ethnicity, language or religion”. Food as identity. 

Food IS identity. Knowing one’s food, is knowing oneself. 

Identity becomes complex when you start factoring the influence of the colonisers on the diet people adopt through the generations, slowly diluting past practices and knowledge, and instead forming what becomes the new cuisine. The new way of life- the fast and furious foods.

Anyway, back to the meal on our colourful table. I started to come back to self, in practice. Baby steps. I took it upon myself to have one meal a day without social media distractions, where I simply took time to prepare a plate of full and took even longer to savour it. Sometimes, this was something as simple as an apple. I danced as I cooked, sang as I plated up and smiled as I ate. Mindful, intentional, deliberate.

If I told you it has been easy, I’d be lying. It starts off lonely.

If I told you it was impossible, I’d be doing you a great disservice. It brings self-discovery.

I have also found true wealth in how I was taught to appreciate food, teachings that have slowly been filtering back in my quiet. My grandmother being the biggest conduit of this practice. The intentional slowness and ritual and no recipes, just the proverbial “listening till your ancestors tell you to stop”. The smell of coal, the fumes from the gas stove, peeling corn off the cob, separating the beans from the stones, drying the leftover apricots from our overflowing tree in the sun for days, making loose leaf tea in the enamel pot over the fire- nothing without thought, everything with pause. My upbringing showed me food as community, my studies taught me food as a science, and both helped make me a better version of myself.

All you have to know is, while the road is long, the journey of stillness and undoing is a beautiful, necessary, blossoming of self. Take it, embrace it, welcome it. Learn from it, learn from those before you.

Put as much patience into yourself as you give to others, the patience to shatter and pull yourself together again. Shake tables, make new ones, break the ones that don't work. Always making sure that you do nothing without intention

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Take time off social media, throw away the airfryer, eat with your hands, have conversations with strangers in the coffee shop and just do what makes you happy. Try a new fruit, if that is all you do, it simply requires you to be present. To actively participate. To simply be.

In however you journey back to yourself, I hope you remember to be kind to yourself.

By Queen Finxa