Schmear the Love

 This fact is that ‘Love’ as you know it is dying. The relationships we see in reality are not like the ones on social media, because only the best parts are shown. The Disney Channel shows that have fed us nuclear-family nuggets of star-crossed lovers in suburban neighborhoods who dabble in minor quarrels that ultimately end in self-growth for both characters is asinine, cliché, and doesn’t represent the reality of our situation. We hold the cold limbs of the corpse of ‘Love’ like its still alive. Pop culture has put aviator sunglasses over the corpse’s eyes so we don’t ask twice, sometimes they even attempt reanimation through violent shocks to the smelling rot the corpse has become resulting in spasms of life, but something smells in the corpse so we see the Love corpse do a jig, but it’s all theatrics. I know you smell this too.  

I work in foodservice, like many of you currently, or have before. ‘Love’ as an ingredient in food is said to be crucial, or even the secret to consumer satisfaction, by marketers throughout history. Some places deem their food as “just like mother used to make”, or “homely cooked warm meals, made with love in every batch”. We have all seen such advertisements because they are everywhere, lurking, shepherding the docile through the valley of reality. Although, quite paradoxically, ‘Love’ is a stranger to food chains throughout North America, and specifically strange in restaurants that hold the quality of speed and sales higher than food quality and customer service. I work in such a place.    

It’s not that my fellow brothers and sisters of food service are incapable of love, it’s only that we are all directed by the customers and overarching managerial themes of our particular facilities to do things that we would rather not do. It is a very unnatural environment. In Sigmund Freud’s later book on human happiness Civilization and Its Discontents he points out three sources of humans’ unhappiness; “the superior power of nature, the feebleness of our own bodies and the inadequacy of the regulations which adjust the mutual relationships of human beings in the family, the state and society”(p.36). Freud made this statement early in his analysis of discontent, but I think that these conditions are saturated in the life of foodservice employees like cellophane over cheap candy. Even with the “superior power of nature”, being one of our sources of discontent I think the regular participation in customer service dwells in a place that defies nature and further coagulates the blood of thought into a sort of standstill.  

The superior power of nature and the feebleness of our bodies’ bites like a cold wind when you’re faced with long days that break down your back, knees, feet, and other limbs. Some days I feel that if my limbs would fall off, I would feel better than if I kept them on. Many of us have had the thought of faking an injury for worker’s compensation, and sometimes the only thing that keeps us from doing a hard power slide on our coccyx is the potential drug testing. With pain in our bodies, we equally feel pain in our minds in a classic psychosomatic way. How can we prioritize love if our mind/body connections are dilapidated?

Freud also mentions that the regulations within our society try to help us by conducting our priorities in a general direction. Although, we can all see that it is impossible to make everyone happy within our government’s system with a growing population and millions of different perspectives on how life should be lived. So, most people with eccentric or unusual perspectives on living are left out in the cold, and most of these kinds of great people live off tedious jobs that they put up with until they can go into the fields that they are passionate about. Ultimately living with your dreams on standby can kill your gumption, confidence, and overall feeling towards life itself, and I see this all too often. 

So, indeed, life is shit. So what? We all know the mental and physical hurdles of the day down in our bones. The people that serve you throughout your day face these hurdles, and the consequences of this are sandwiches, mochas, bagels, and burgers laced with hate. Pure hate for the world is the vibes you take in when you take in your Denny’s eggs and pancakes, or your Einstein’s bagel and shmear. It truly is schmearing the world in hate and bad vibes. Our collective consciousness is fevered and run-down with flashes of regulation, the stress of being on time, grief of unfinished preparations and many other symbols that are now running on repeat, like the tape of time is skipping. 

I feel that Love doesn’t exist as it does in popular culture. People are too complicated for us to love in simple ways. We have to try to remember all the time that love is the only path to happiness, and that love isn’t something that you get. No. Love is something that you give. The more you give love the more love magnetizes to you. I know it is a simple thing that seems trite, but it is true. 

I will finish with this; although the conditions are hard in remedial jobs that, “suck our souls”, the upside is the community you build within the soul suck. We all create a community of people within our jobs, we make jokes when prepping ham slices, “playing with your meat buddy?”, they would ask me, and we make fun of all the rude/dumb customers in a way that bonds us together, “that guy just asked if there was dairy in the sour cream, where the hell has he been his entire life?”. We need to spread the shmear of good vibes, so when you make your food blow a kiss to it, focus on the love that is going into the food so that hate can be withheld and hopefully suffocated one day.

“Four dogs in the distance

each stands for a silence.

Bluebirds lodged in an evergreen altar…

I’m gonna shine out in the wild kindness

and hold the world to its word.”

- David Berman, American Water

Sources:

            Freud, S., & Sigmund Freud Collection (Library of Congress). (1962). Civilization and its discontents. New York: W.W.