This is a line from the show keeps echoing in my head.
It's a line from a Netflix show called "Emily in Paris". As a good husband I watch modern girly shows like this with my wife because she puts up with all my action adventure and science-fiction entertainment. I find that watching them is good for our relationship and he gives me insights into hers and others minds and drivers.
It was a fun show! While I don't agree with everything that Emily did in the show it was fun to see the way they created situations and then the offbeat and creative ways that they had Emily handle them. And marketing and promoting in the fashion industry is so outside of my realm that it was entertaining.
But one of the guys, the chef that lived in the apartment below hers in the same building that she lived in, said a line that keeps echoing in my head. He had fixed a meal and he was giving her the cast-iron skillet that he had used to fix it. He was washing the skillet out. And he told her never use soap in the skillet! Then he explained that the cast-iron skillet was a lot like the French in his opinion: we never really clean anything out, we just kind of scrape off the last layer and start again.
That line of philosophy is interesting to me. It's a generalization of a country and its people. But it's also a generalization for how we can handle things. We do something, it's either good or bad or not anything, and then we scrape off that layer and get to where the pan is usable for the next thing, and prepare something else in it.
It kind of goes against the idea that we're always building and growing. I struggle with the saying that is very common nowadays in my circles that if you're not growing you're dying. Because I disagree with it so much. But the idea of being useful for multiple things and events and situations just by cleaning off the last layer without any soap and without totally removing it is appealing to me. I tend to approach life like that. I'll do something, it will be great, I keep a residue of it with me, and then I go on to the next thing. If I keep the whole thing with me the residue can be comforting and adds flavor to whatever else I do. But I continue on with that new layer and I never really do clean anything out completely.
Something different to think about.
