Going on All the Rides

Picky eating vs. living with gusto

Photo by Benjamin Voros

Parents sometimes complain that their kids are “picky eaters.” The kids refuse to try new foods, or if they do deign to nibble on the corner of something new, they are quick to declare it inedible.

But aren’t most of us picky eaters these days when it comes to what we consume? As the all-knowing algorithms, like indulgent nannies, feed us a steady diet of pizza and ice cream, our tolerance for other flavors goes down. Despite living in the great cross-cultural carnival of modernity, our worlds are becoming smaller, looping in ever-tighter circles of familiarity.

We expect to experience only things that we know we already like – the view from within our political bubble, the movie suggestion based on our preference profile, a shopping cart pre-filled with what we bought last time. We are taught to be passive, and what we are “served” only deepens our inertia.

The Wonder Wheel

I have teenage twins, and I remember when they were four or five years old and I was trying to get them to taste a new food, I would often give them the following speech:

“Life is like Coney Island. There are all different kinds of rides. Big rides, small rides, fast rides, slow rides. Some of them go up and some go down and some go round and round. Some are scary, some are fun. Some of them go really high up in the air and give you a view of the wide, wide ocean. Some take you down into a dark tunnel. So many kinds of rides. And when you reach the end of your life – when it’s your turn to die – you are going to look back and wish that you had gone on every ride that you had a chance to go on. You are going to want to have tasted everything that life had to offer… like this Ethiopian pickled beet, for example.”

The speech didn’t work. Ever. They would ignore me. They would roll their eyes like little mini versions of the teenagers they are now. They would start talking about something else. And to be fair, it’s probably a lot to ask of five-year-olds to imagine how they’re going to feel at the end of their life. It’s a lot to ask of anyone.

And yet, it’s vital that we do it. It’s spiritually essential to take time to think, feel, and pray into the long view of our lives – and how we will value having lived them when we reach the end. I believe that, among other things, we are going to want to have lived expansively, generously, and with gusto.

Religious traditions and embodied spiritual practices, if they are doing their job right, push us to step outside of our day-to-day lives and take the broadest possible view – the one from the top of the Coney Island Ferris wheel – the Wonder Wheel; the view we will have at the end of our lives. We ask ourselves – What will we want our lives to have been about? How will we want to be remembered? How will we want to have touched the world? What will we be proud of and what will we regret?

Regret

It’s kind of a truism among clergy who compare notes on these things that the deep regrets that we talk about at the end of our lives are rarely the mistakes we made – they are usually the opportunities we missed; the risks we didn’t take; the times when we played safe and lived small; the times when we could have swung at a pitch, but we let it go by. Those are the regrets.

I don’t want us to have those regrets. Life is like Coney Island. There are all different kinds of rides. And when you reach the end of your life, when it’s your turn to die, you are going to look back and wish that you had gone on all the rides that you had a chance to go on.

Here's what I’m not talking about: I’m not talking about actual rides. I’m not talking about the kind of adult play that’s expensive, has a big carbon footprint, sucks up natural resources, and requires a battalion of minimum-wage workers to make it happen. I’m not talking about spending the weekend at a fancy resort. I’m not talking about hiring a crew of sherpas to haul you up Mt. Everest. I’m not talking about buying …anything.

I’m also not talking about trying things that are truly self-destructive – taking dangerous drugs, having unsafe sex, engaging in self-harm. Those are not the rides that I mean. I hope that when those opportunities arise in our lives, we are able to pass them by.

Rides of the Body, Heart, Mind, and Spirit

The rides I’m thinking of are the rides that connect us more deeply and vividly to the sacred earth and life of which we are a part. There are rides of the body – jump into that lake on your hike. You just don’t know; you can’t see the future: this might be the last chance you ever have to swim in a lake. You don’t know. Taste those Ethiopian pickled beets. It doesn’t matter if the lake water is cold or if you don’t like beets – it’s an experience and your soul is hungry for it.

There are rides of the mind, which many of us who read essays like this tend to be pretty good at already – reading, studying, debating. But challenge yourself to really understand a perspective that’s opposite from your own. Learn a new language. You might understand the world so differently if you learned a Native American language. Or Gujarati. Or Chinese.

And then there are rides of the heart. Take the ultimate risk of loving someone – a romantic partner, a child, a friend. Join a community and commit to it. Start that difficult conversation; get real with another human being. Look into the eyes of your beloved and tell them that you love them. Let yourself believe that you are loved. The rides of the heart can be the wildest rides.

Our society these days has gotten a bit timid. We live life at arm’s length sometimes, because it feels easier and safer that way. We live at one level remove, often substituting the virtual world for the physical world. And this kind of distance from real life permeates our culture in so many ways. We tend to have less and less connection to the land. Few of us get much dirt under our fingernails. As a society, we’re having less sex, less romantic partnership, and fewer children. Our food is all packaged in plastic, and we don’t know where it came from. Strawberries seem to get less flavorful every year, but we can’t really remember what they used to taste like.

To insist on living life more vividly, not managed through corporations and screens, not wrapped in plastic; to insist on our own direct experience of this world that we are blessed to be part of so briefly – this is actually profoundly countercultural. This is what I mean by “going on all the rides.” Going on all the real rides, in all of their richness, risk, and complexity.

If we do it, there will be ups and downs. We will get hurt, we will fail, and – God willing – we will have moments of bliss. There will be times when, just like when we’re rounding the top of a roller coaster and looking down 20 stories to the ground, we will wish we hadn’t climbed aboard for this one. We’ll wish we could get off and we won’t be able to. We’ve all had rides like that. To live large is to take the good with the bad. It’s to trust the process.

Extraordinary from the Inside

We can all probably think of a famous person who has led a life of daring and excitement who could be the poster child for this. But it might be more useful to think of someone who is not famous – someone we know.

I think of my husband, Jeff, who has had three careers – first as a musician (instead of going to college), then as an actor, and then as a corporate communications coach – and is now a leader in the Jewish environmental movement in NYC. I think too of my mother, Susan, who worked hard her whole life to break the glass ceiling for female musicians, first as a big band trombonist, then as a conductor, and finally as a music teacher inspiring her students for decades.

Our lives do not need to look glamorous from the outside to be extraordinary from the inside. Only we can know if we are living with full vitality and swinging at the good pitches that life sends us. We can feel it. One good sign might be that our lives always scare us just a little bit.

To live this way is to take the ride of the spirit. This is the kind of ride where nothing picks us up and buckles us in and carries us along and powers our engine except hope and faith – faith in our higher power and our deepest self. A ride of the spirit is a life of meaning.

Life is like Coney Island. There are lots and lots of rides. And the fact is we can’t go on all of them. There are too many and our time in this life is too short. Some rides are thrust upon us, and we have no option to get off – poverty, trauma, or illness. Others we can’t get a ticket for even if we desperately want to.

But for all the other rides – the ones that we can choose – I want to suggest that we all make ourselves a promise: that when we turn one down, let it be for a damn good reason. Let it be because it’s immoral or would hurt someone or would be truly dangerous.

But don’t let it be because we might not like it.

Don’t let it be because we’re picky eaters.

Don’t let it be because we’ll do it online instead.

Don’t let it be because we’re scared.

Don’t let it be because we’re clinging to the past.

Don’t let it be because we don’t want our ideas challenged.

For God’s sake, don’t let it be because we might get our heart broken.

And don’t let it be because we think the little bit of good we can do on that ride won’t make a difference. Because it will.

At the end of our days on this earth – when it’s our turn to die – we are not going to want to have lived a life mediated by corporations, screens, and algorithms. We’re going wish that we had gone on every ride we could — expansively, generously, and with gusto.

The author Hunter S. Thompson put it perfectly:

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!”