You're alive, Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you can change the world, the world will change.
Potential. Once you're dead, it's gone. Over. You've made what you've made, dreamed your dreams, written your name.
You may be buried here, you may even walk. But that potential is finished.
—Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
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Autumn crunches in, sending the leaves from neighbors' trees (our tree waits until everyone else is long done, then flings its dead leaves down in deep December) skittering 'round the neighborhood. My thoughts follow the leaves, drifting, lifting, crunching, exploding into powder.
And the word, the concept, of potential, is like a mind-worm, clinging to those thoughts as they drift and float and blast into bits.
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A couple things happened in just these past weeks.
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I decided, one Friday morning, that I'd make a small batch of brownies for a treat. We had some frozen yogurt, and some Hershey's syrup, and I thought brownie sundaes after Friday night dinner would be a great way to end a week that had turned out to be challenging, for each of us, in the best of ways.
I've been trying to be more creative in the kitchen,—looking for new recipes, re-upping old recipes we loved once but that we've let fall by the wayside on this bustling journey. So I found, in my baking-crusted old handwritten cookbook, a recipe for Tollhouse Double Chocolate Brownies. Instead of using cocoa in these tasty treats, I melt chocolate chips with sugar, water, and butter, add eggs, then stir the dry ingredients into that rich concoction.
And of course, at the very end of battering, I lovingly mix in another heaping cup of chips.
I remember that Matt and his friends loved these brownies, that they could devour a still-warm panful in fifteen minutes. I wonder why I stopped making them.
(The recipe link, by the way, is at the end of this post. I clipped mine from a magazine years before we had a home computer, but I'm glad to report the recipe is still alive and well on the Internet and being baked in America's kitchens…)
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So I melted the chips with their ingredient buddies in a medium saucepan, and I measured out the dry ingredients…slipping some oat flour and some gluten-free AP flour substitute into the mix. Then, when the chocolate mixture had cooled enough, I added the eggs.
One at a time, says the recipe, stirring thoroughly.
I cracked Egg One on the edge of a dinner knife—I have learned to my rue that cracking eggs on rims of bowls or pans often contributes chunks of shell to otherwise delicious concoctions. The egg glooped into the pan, rich orange yolk gleaming, and I beat it into the chocolate-y goodness with a sturdy old wooden spoon.
Then I cracked Egg Two and dumped it in, and, oh, man. It looked—well, I won't tell you how it looked, because that is a really, really gross picture.
And it smelled even grosser than it looked.
I'd got me a rotten egg.
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I cracked that icky, disgusting egg right into the batter, and my first thought was, "Scoop it out!" But the noxious goop spread and contaminated, and I turned on the Insinkerator and poured the whole disgusting mess down its maw.
I ran the hot water into the drain for a long time to get rid of the cloying stench.
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I put the flour mixture into a Tupperware container, labeled it, and stuck it in the cupboard. We had frozen yogurt sundaes for dessert that night, and they were just fine without a brownie base.
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The next day, Mark thought about eggs for breakfast, and I said I'd cook 'em if he'd crack 'em.
He did, and they were all fine, and we made a tasty omelet.
Emboldened, I mixed up a new batch of brownies that afternoon, using up the flour mixture that waited so patiently.
But this time, I cracked the eggs into a separate bowl, because now I knew: any egg has the potential to be rotten.
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I guess I should have known that before—that any egg COULD be rotten—but no egg, as far as I can remember, ever has been. I started to think about how many eggs I have cracked in my lifetime. Figuring I started cracking eggs at, say, age eight, using them in breakfasts and cookie dough and cake mixes, in quiches and meringues, I think it would be safe to estimate at least four eggs per week. So…60 years of egg-cracking times 52 weeks in a year, and that's 3,120 weeks. Multiply that by four, and I come up with 12,480 eggs—give or take, of course; some weeks, and some seasons, are just eggier than others—cracked in my lifetime.
And in all that time, only ONE icky one. Pretty good track record, those eggs have built up.
Pretty good odds AGAINST cracking a shell and pouring out steaming ick.
I get all that, intellectually, but now I know the possibility. Now I don't add an egg to the mix until I'm sure it's fresh and unspoiled.
The potential for rotten is there. I'm aware of that now.
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So there was THAT. Here's another thing: I have been falling off the gluten-free wagon for a while now.
First, I decided that, once in a while, it would be okay to have a slice of whole-grain bread, whole grains being good for me, and the grains in, say, a 12-grain bread, not all being gluten-y. Twig and seed bread, Mark calls it, but it makes a fine toast.
So once in a while, I would have a slice of toast or two for breakfast.
Then I thought it was a shame to abstain when we had a loaf of crackling-crust bread from Giacomo's or Panera with, perhaps, a red sauce meal. We still use gluten-free pasta; what could a little slice of bread hurt?
And then, the weather turning, I was getting the urge to bake. Once a week or so, I'd throw in a batch of cookies. I would mix 1:1 AP flour substitute and oat flour in with regular AP flour; I knew we really needed at least a modicum of the glutenacious flour in there, so the cookies would hold together.
And what kind of a cook—what kind of a wife and mother—would I be if I didn't taste those cookies first, making sure they were fit to offer to the boyos?
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Nothing disastrous happened when I ate wheat. So, gradually, I allowed burger buns and croutons, panko breadcrumbs and a cracker or too, a chicken salad-loaded croissant and a bowl of steaming French onion soup with cheese-covered crusty bread, back into my eating.
To even say my diet was gluten-reduced at that point was stretching it.
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And then there were a couple of trips, overnighters where I slept in unfamiliar beds, some smaller and lumpier than my own. I began to notice a bit of a twinge in my lower back.
Day by day, that twinge grew twingier, until finally I had to admit, even after I was sleeping in my own comfy bed, "My back hurts."
Then, "My back aches."
I started hitting the Tylenol, and the ibuprofen, and the naproxen. They helped some, but the pain didn't disappear.
I'd wake up in the morning and I'd have to think. What's the best way to swing my legs over the edge, I would ponder, without setting off the jangling in my back?
I hobbled.
Riding in the car too long left me cramped and incapacitated.
Finally, I couldn't find a comfortable sleep position, and I knew then I'd better take stock.
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Was I at the go-to-the-doctor point? I was pretty sure she'd order an X-ray, and the X-ray reviewer would say, "Well, you've got some arthritis," nodding toward the age on my chart like, "Oh, honey; what do you expect?"
And maybe they'd propose some physical therapy.
Before I went there, I decided, I'd try a few other things.
Some exercise, especially the Chi-Gong set I had been neglecting: that's one thing I started doing.
Getting back to gluten-free living was another.
I remembered then, dimly but suddenly, that way back in the early stages of gluten-free eating, I was amazed at how minor aches and pains disappeared.
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Three days after kicking gluten completely to the curb and doing the exercises daily, my back feels so much better.
Duh. A brilliant realization: what I eat and how I move has a huge impact on how I feel.
Removing gluten from my diet has the potential to make aches and pains disappear.
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So this week, I ponder potential.
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The Oxford Dictionary online tells me that potential derives from the Latin word potent, which traveled all the way through Middle English to the present time—the same word, the same meaning: being powerful, being able.
And potential can be an adjective or a noun, says the Dictionary. It can describe something or someone that has the capacity or ability to develop into something the future. That's a potential life-changing plan, we might say.
And it can mean the qualities we have, qualities that may be sleeping, that could be discovered, and that might lead us to future success. He's got the potential to do great things, a teacher might, for instance, note. Or, in trying to quash a plan, a committee member might point out its potential for disaster.
(Potential is also a physics term, I find—and I find I have dim memories of that usage too—something about energy of the mass in a gravitational field, or of the charge in an electrical field…but thinking about that has the potential to make my head pound, so I scurry away.)
Omnipotent—the all-powerful—comes, of course, from the same root, and so does potentate: a monarch or ruler, especially one who fiercely wields their power.
And of course there's the negative impotent, meaning powerless, among other interpretations.
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Just for fun, try googling 'not working up to potential' (a note my parents used to complain about reading on report cards regularly). You'll get something like 5,500,000,000 hits.
It seems like potential, and achieving potential, is something we, as a people, think about a lot.
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Many of the hits I clicked on deal with working matters. I can read a number of articles that tell me how to reach my full potential on the job; these pieces might help me navigate around a supervisor who seems bent on holding me back, or they might alert me to opportunities I could miss or misinterpret.
I am well past the point where any of that applies, but I can see where some people might find that kind of advice to be helpful.
There are many, many articles, too, on how leadership can help employees reach their full potential.
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I wonder about that—getting the employees to fulfill their potentials, their promises. Do we mean, "Let's get each employee to really think about their skills and qualifications, and then let's give them work that allows them to shine"?
Or do we mean, "These people aren't WORKING hard enough! Let's get them to expend as much energy [ALL their potential energy, in fact] as they can"????
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I think about kids in educational settings, and I think we sometimes have conflicting 'potential' goals.
One is to shape the kids in the same mold, to burnish off their rough edges, and to graduate good citizens with similar beliefs, with strong work ethics, and with great career potential. Not all of that is negative, but maybe it's not all entirely positive either.
Another is to awaken in each child an understanding of their natural propensities; to give each child a chance to discover what kind of work makes their heart sing; and then to help that child pursue that work.
I read something once that suggested each of us has seeds of some kind of genius within us.
It's just that not all of us discover those seeds.
For instance, what if a computer genius is born in a non-technological society? Or what if a potentially great poet is malnourished and has sub-par schooling? What if a social genius grows up in a household that tends toward quiet and isolation?
Unrealized potential, I'm thinking, can be a very, very sad thing.
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Potential, of course, can lead to good, or it can foster evil. Any situation has the potential for success, I think, and the potential for disaster, and even the potential to be brushed aside, unexamined, and left to moulder.
And there are broad thought, wide-ranging potentials, but there are also, I'm thinking, the tiny potentials in our everyday lives.
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Here's an everyday example that pops to mind. I was at work, with people I enjoyed, and we were on a break, eating soup that a colleague had proudly brought to us. It was, we all agreed, delicious. That was a fall day, just about this time of year, gusty and gray, and a steaming bowl of soup seemed just right.
We were content.
And then Crabby Colleague came in. She scooped herself a bowl of soup, dipped in a spoon, tasted.
The conversation paused. And then Crabby said, "Why is it so SALTY?"
We all looked down at our bowls. Oh, is it? we each thought, stricken. Is it salty?
The soup-bringer looked gut-punched, and Crabby gazed complacently as the plump balloon of enjoyment squealed its slow leak.
Our words carry potential—to lift up, to cast down, to soak with disinterest. Crabby's words could have bonded her to the group; instead, they ruined the moment.
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What a complicated gift, what a double-edged sword, potential is.
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I wonder sometimes if each person had the ability, the self-awareness, and the physical necessities, to achieve their full potential, how life would be different.
Would bullies need to bull if they were doing something else that absorbed them, that sent them home at night tired but refreshed—proud of themselves?
Would a child who does not excel at academics or athletics feel successful realizing how few people have their ability to console others (or to cook a fantastic meal from ingredients on hand, to sew a whimsical patch on a beloved old sweater, or to sing, or dance, or make a collage…whatever they've discovered their personal genius to be)?
Could a fulfilled attitude change a person, and thus their loved ones; could it affect their community?
What would that community be like if each person happily lived in their full potential?
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Is my biggest, most important goal, then, if all of that is true, to work to recognize my own potential?
And how, exactly, would I start?
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Of course, each day has potential.
I can plod through the hours; I can resent the tasks I need to do; I can slog outside to rake the leaves (They're not even from OUR tree! It's not FAIR!), or I can shake myself into being mindful, and I can appreciate the mundane gifts that a regular Wednesday, say, has to offer.
A meal eaten together has the potential to be engaging. It can be a rushed-through, less-than-memorable experience, too.
Each interaction has potential.
Each decision has potential.
The key, I'm thinking, is the mindfulness I bring to the action. What I decide about eating that delicious slice of fresh-baked bread, for instance, has the potential to lodge in my lower back.
I need to think about the potential of my decisions, my perspective, my approach to right here and right now.
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And then what I encounter has the potential to change me, in big ways and small.
It will be a long time—forever, I'm thinking,—before I blithely crack an egg into a batter without isolating it first. I will not forget the potential for contamination.
And I hope it will be an equally long time before I chow down on white bread, and before that twinge grows back into a full-blown pain.
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Skitter go my thoughts. A little breeze... Oops! Gone again.
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https://www.food.com/recipe/nestle-toll-house-double-chocolate-brownies-19441
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