Something Impressive

I had to write something so here it is

The word looks strange to me now. I’ve written and deleted it so many times that its shape is sort of shapeless and its meaning sort of meaningless, to the point that I’m reconsidering everything. This is the thing: the word itself holds weight, and requires us to do the same.

Being happy and free should be impressive. But it’s unquantifiable and that’s scary in this world even though I think the most impressive people are the ones who are not the ones who do.

I want to write something impressive but I fall short and this draft has been edited over and over again to no avail.

I’ve been happy and free for the past two weeks but I have not been creating, I have not been earning, I have not been impressing and therefore I have not been successful. This is unfortunate and confusing because I am so often impressed by people’s happiness and their freedom. Writing has become a way of wielding my thoughts against myself which I suppose turns my expression into an impression of sorts – denting my delicate sensibility, pummelling it to a pulp, making everything inside of me feel small. Until I defer to staying silent.

I cook for myself more than I cook for others. I mean this figuratively as well as literally. This means I only need to impress myself in these culinary situations, which I find is much easier than impressing other people. This selfishness in the kitchen is what keeps me cooking and eating and enjoying food.

To make an impression is a delicate dance between doing and being. I believe I’ve done impressive things but I would not consider myself an impressive person, and anyway, those impressive things are long gone now, all relics from a past life full of action, risk and experience.

But there are small impressions that I have of myself. Not falling apart at the prospect of something bad. Parallel parking a large vehicle in a foreign country. Drinking enough water in a day. Hiking up a hill.

Writing is an act of interrogation, which means that you can be blissfully ignorant of your own shortcomings or opinions of the world until you start typing. I woke up this morning happy, and two hours later, many drafts deleted, my brain has convinced me that I have nothing of value to say.

Cooking is an act of exploration, which means that you can focus your energy outwards – into the rhythmic chop or the persistent stir or the sensory pleasure of smelling, tasting, seeing, listening and touching something outside of yourself.

I sit with a group of women I’ve never met before at dinner. They’re mostly younger than me but talk with such vigour, conviction and experience that I begin to wonder if I’ve aged backwards. I am impressed by their confidence, their humility, their wit, their stories. Why does being impressed by others make me feel less impressed with myself?

I ask my friend Sophia, an impressive Hollywood screenwriter, what the word means to her. “I think it means to like how you do something as much as what you do.”

I prefer her version to mine (this is why Sophia is impressive).

I don’t need to ask the question ‘why’ we don’t consider happiness more impressive than power (capitalism). It would be great to resist this; to be ok with being simply content instead of comparing ourselves to one another’s incomparable successes and valuing our lives based on a set of rules dictated to us rather than dreamed up by us.

The more I ruminate on the word, the less I believe in it.

I try to think of a recipe for something impressive but I can only think of a Korean breakfast laced with sesame. Soy bean sprouts and squeezed spinach and crumbled tofu with seaweed. Glistening bowls of rice and bowls of bone broth that shimmer with fat.