Cast-iron skillet
Dear Patient,
I once had an acupuncturist working for me who would always burn sage in the clinic. Whenever anything bad happened, she wanted to cleanse the negative energy out of the space. Her threshold for what constituted bad was pretty low, so she ended up burning a lot of sage.
Finally one day I asked her to stop doing it. I’m not opposed to a good energetic cleansing every now and then, but I felt like she was burning away the good with the bad. “Think of it like a cast iron skillet,” I told her.
A cast iron skillet gets better with use. Every meal you every prepare in it adds to the seasoning. And it’s incredibly forgiving. Burned your corn bread? No problem, just scrape it out and start over. It’ll be fine. But whatever you do, don’t wash a cast iron skillet with soap and water. You might get rid of a few burned bits, but you’ll also wash away all the good seasoning, those years of sauces and stir fries and spices.
When bad things happen, it’s tempting to want to purge the negativity, to wash it all off and start over. But if you’re not careful, you’ll lose the good stuff too. Our experiences, and the people who come in and our of our lives, make up the seasoning of our days. Without the full spectrum of flavors, the sweet and the bitter, our lives would just be bland.
Love and gratitude,
Your Acupuncturist