Deep wine-fueled thoughts

The other night, we watched the movie SOMM, which follows four sommeliers preparing for the Master Sommelier exam. It's an intensive process, the culmination of years of working in the industry and intense months of refining your palate and studying thousands of flashcards on arcane details of wine knowledge. It takes long hours and becomes an obsession, one that pulls you away from your family and friends.

It was fun hearing their insanely detailed descriptions for wine (fresh can of tennis balls? decaying meat?) and nail-bitingly suspenseful as they heard their results. But what stuck with me most was the passion and perseverance that the process requires. One of them stayed up till all hours of the night studying for weeks ahead of time – which, though I am no fan of the all-nighter, was oddly inspiring.

Nothing I do currently requires that kind of intense commitment and perseverance. To be sure, I work hard and will occasionally stay late at the office. But right now, I'm happy to have found a balance – of working and playing and cooking and gardening and exercising and reading. But one day I'll throw myself into something imbalanced – the pursuit of one really valuable thing at the expense of other really great things – and the movie made me newly excited for that.

Because I am not planning on becoming a master sommelier, I imagine that will be grad school, or maybe some especially all-consuming job assignment. And, with Tunisian election season coming up, that day may be coming sooner than I think. From what I understand, the election missions are going to be a throw-yourself-into-it-and-make-it-happen type deal.

Also, sometimes I venture down the road of thinking that the only worthwhile activities are those that contribute to Saving The World, so it seems somewhat trivial, self-indulgent even, to dedicate your life's work to knowing vineyards and vintages.

But the movie made me think about how it doesn't matter so much what you're passionate about, what matters is the passion. The old "Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." Cliche, for sure, but nevertheless – a good reminder to start with what I'm passionate about and work from there, instead of trying to figure out what I "should" be doing.

It's happening.

All of a sudden, everything is happening all at once, and fast. After lots of drafting and political infighting and two years of prospective election dates getting pushed back, Tunisia has a new constitution and an electoral law and a calendar for not one but three election dates this fall. The catch phrase in Tunisia these days is, apparently, "It's happening!"

It is super exciting - the culmination of lots of work on the part of Tunisian political players. Because my organization is supporting Tunisian groups that are observing the elections and bringing in international folks to observe as well, it also means that the pace is going to pick up at work.

Austin and I also found out recently that we're getting kicked out of our apartment because our landlord is moving back in after a few years in DC. It's a bummer because we (mostly) love the current apartment and even more of a bummer because we learned this time last year that we hate moving. We weren't totally sure that we wanted to stay in this place, but remember that little adage about wanting what you can't have? Apartment-hunting in DC is the worst. I get overwhelmed just thinking about it, and then again about moving in the midst of a busy work period.

As I can see over the peak of summer into the fall, it has also hit me that I may need to start doing some serious work if I have real intentions of going to grad school anytime soon. So at the back of my mind, I'm thinking that i need to spend some quality time with the GRE book.

And all of this amidst lots of fun summer travel plans that are going to be totally awesome but also mean time away from home. And it's the summer, so what I really want is to drink on a roof and swim in a pool. 

All told, it's going to be a busy few months, and I'm a little overwhelmed thinking about it. But it's also struck me that being overwhelmed is, on some level, a choice. It's a story you tell yourself, dwelling on the negative instead of the positive of having lots of fundamentally GOOD stuff going on, like great career opportunities and a chance to explore a new neighborhood. Just like, instead of saying you're crazy busy, you can say that you're "wildly productive and living the dream." Instead of "I'm overwhelmed" – "It's all happening!" 

So I am going to try to tell myself that story. I'm going to try to ride the wave and hold on tight. Ready, set, go.

(Fun fact: I wrote this on July 14. On July 15, our apartment got burglarized. A good reminder that no matter how crazy things seem, they can—and will—get crazier.)

Il faut cultiver notre jardin

Three days later and this eggplant was exponentially bigger. Now that's what I call a monitoring & evaluation plan.

After a long day of work recently, I headed out to the community garden to do some watering and weeding. As tempting as it was crash at home, I always end up enjoying doing some mindless physical work outside. There’s a Zen satisfaction in plucking individual blades of grass from my rows of peppers and tomatoes, and I love feeling the sticky heat of the day give way to cooler evening breezes.

In my line of work, we deal with big, entrenched problems that don’t have easy answers. The heady early days of the Arab Spring have given way to something more complicated and less optimistic, to authoritarian backsliding in Egypt and fresh militia-driven conflict in Libya. It's also hard to define impact in the abstract work of democracy & governance - we're supporting democracy, not delivering x number of vaccines. And even if NDI could solve all the world’s problems, my role in the organization is a modest one. As much as I like to think that I’m single-handedly responsible for the successes (not to jinx it) of the Tunisian democratic transition, much of my work is administrative, a degree removed from the awesome activities in the field that it ultimately supports. 

So it’s nice to come to the garden to deal with concrete, solvable problems, one weed at a time, and to see short-term progress in the form of growing eggplants and reddening tomatoes.

As I was mulling the problem of the day (on this occasion, slavery in Mauritania), the words “Il faut cultivar notre jardin” from Voltaire’s Candide popped into my head. If my memory of high school French class can be trusted, it’s one of the last lines in the book, spoken after the characters have endured various trials and tribulations and gone in circles debating big existential questions. Depending on how you interpret it, it’s a call to pull back from the affairs of the world, or at least to stop with the endless philosophizing, and focus on the little patch of ground around you.

It also made me think of a book I recently read, Homeward Bound: Why Women are Embracing the New Domesticity, about the newfound interest in gardening and canning and knitting and cooking. Matchar argues that the trend is born out of frustration with a system that has failed us. If you don’t trust the safety of the food system and abysmal family policies make it all but impossible to “have it all,” leaving the workplace, growing your own food, and homeschooling your kids becomes incredibly appealing. Matchar expressed concerned that privileged, Whole Foods-shopping folks see personal lifestyle changes as the solution, instead of spending their energy advocating for change to the system that would benefit everyone.

I definitely see what she’s getting at, but I think that concern is overblown. I think we can both work towards solving the big problems—whether it’s by supporting democratic institutions in North Africa or tackling homelessness in DC or advocating to improve farm policy in the US—and doing what we can, where we are, to make the world a better place—whether by growing a garden or helping a new immigrant learn English. And in fact, I think that balance is a key ingredient for a satisfying life. Those personal actions may not result in the structural change we need, but they give us the satisfaction of seeing immediate impacts, forging new connections, and gaining a sense of control over our lives. They fuel us to take on the bigger challenges.

So go take on the big abstract problems of the world during the day, and in the evening, come home and cultivate your garden.