I was having my ramen dinner at home.
As I hastily picked up and continuously twisted my fancy beautiful transparent ceramic grinder full of Himalayan Pink salt and watching grains of salt raining gracefully into my ramen soup like sand drizzling into the ocean and disappearing, a thought popped into my mind. What would my life be without salt?
Good incentive for an endless thought-provoking writing.
What would my life be without____?
Voilà! I just unlocked a bottomless of options for myself to write about. It’s brilliant, because in the process of filling the blank and writing about it I will grow more appreciative of what I have.
My life without salt would be tasteless.
Everything would taste awful.
First, if you walk in my kitchen and open the cupboard, what you’d see is lots of assorted bottles of…soy sauce, cluttered with all kinds of other salt substitutes. Yes, I can’t live without salt.
I am not obsessed with salty food though. You’ll almost never see me adding salt to my meal, except for that one rare occasion I added salt to my ramen dinner. Which was the main culprit that triggered all of these lengthy writings. My father always urged me to eat with little salt. I am aware that too much salt in my diet is not healthy. But everything I eat would taste as plain as tap water? Just take a moment and imagine. Unbearable. Isn’t it?
For a super foodie such as myself. It is un.bear.able.
Of course you’d ask, what about sweet, sour, bitter and all other tastes? Nah. Those are great, but can I live without it? Probably.
Without salt, I’d not enjoy eating so much. I’d not be looking forward to my lunch break every day and rush out to get it before all the seats are taken. I’d walk deliberately and think about how merciless life is by taking away salt out of my life.
When friends ask me to eat out with them, I’d not be so excited and droop all over the menu before a waiter come over. I’d propose instead “You know what? Why don’t we go surfing, we could grab some seafood in the ocean and drink some deliciously salt water along the way.” And I leave my friends be like “Ewww.”
I’d go to the beach and hang out by the ocean every day and return with a gigantic jar of salt water, so that I could do the solar evaporation process myself to produce some salt. I’d move to somewhere walking distance to the beach, so it’s easier to achieve that process.
I’d swim across rivers, dig into the ground, and climb up that Himalaya Mountain, just to discover and bring home a jar of fresh salt.
I’d be on Google all-day and typing in things like: how to DIY salt making at home? Is salt really gone extinct on our planet? Can human get salt from alien planet?
I’d probably also skip more showers and lick myself a lot.
I’d join a lot of sports team, and just…sweat.
I’d live somewhere that has only summer. So I could sweat more.
But then I need more salt intake.
This is not fair. My assumption made it still possible to get salt from other resources. What if there’s no salt at all in the world?
I truly don’t know.
I’d go nuts.
What’s worth mentioning though is that without all these thought process and that moment of reflection at the dinner table, I’d have never realized how something I never paid much attention to means so much to me. Something seems as little importance as salt has such a profound influence on my day to day living. For 20 years, I had taken it for granted…along with many other amazing things in life that seemed too small to notice.
Agree with me or not, salt is great.
There’s even an entire book attributed to nothing but salt. It’s called Salt by Mark Kurlansky, talking about how salt, the only rock we eat, has transformed the civilization from the very beginning of humankind.
Don’t take it as a grain of salt.
Something so common in our lives is easily overlooked. Salt is essential to our existence. Our need is so strong and enduring that we tend to take its availability for granted. – Stephen A. Haines
