Fear of boredom

I remember in earlier years, specifically high school and college, when I was studying the French language, teachers explained something I found very thought-provoking.  In English we might say, "I am bored."  However, in French the phrase that is used would be literally translated from French to English as, "I am boring myself."  I have always found this to be an incredibly interesting difference in perspective.

I have always had this little bit of a fear of boredom, although not in a way that makes me do reckless things.  Instead I like to keep busy with things that I find interesting.  I am lucky in that I get to spend most of my daily life doing things that I do not find boring or uninteresting, or to put it in the French way of speaking, I don't often bore myself.  I have a wide range of interests and several things that are a regular part of my life that I find highly enjoyable.  

Cooking certainly fits in as something that is not boring at all.  I've made chocolate chip cookies many many times over the years, but every time I make them again I find it a totally non-boring experience.  The same thing can be said when I re-watch a movie I particularly like, or re-read a book that is a favorite of mine, or when I play Liszt's b minor piano sonata for the umpteenth time.   The point is that making good food is always a great thing to do and not just because "we have to eat so we might as well make something".

While I never tire of making chocolate chip cookies, sometimes I might be in the mood to discover something new.  And that process of discovery is part of what keeps food non-boring.  In this day of high technology and lightning-fast globalized communications it is so easy to discover something new to create in the kitchen.  More than that, it is very easy to learn a little about another part of the world and another culture and other traditions by exploring foods related to those places and peoples outside our daily experience.  That doesn't mean I will try everything just because it's different.  But it does mean that I can never run out of things to try that intrigue me enough to explore when I run across them on a website or in a recipe book or through conversations with anyone else.  

After all that is said, though, sometimes it's just a fantastic thing to make that same recipe of chocolate chip cookies for the 247th time (which might be why I always have milk in the fridge).