Zen and the Art of Guacamole Makingness

I made guacamole tonight, just a layman's version—featuring copious amounts of lemon juice and cumin striving to atone for my current regrettable lack of tomato products—but the results were nonetheless recognizable and even fairly yummy. I marveled a little at the way the knife cut so effortlessly and smoothly through the avocado's pearly flesh, curtailing its trajectory only when it reached the core. Pleasingly palm-sized and just slippery enough to let the flesh slide right off without rips or tears, the avocado pit resembles the petrified wood of a shiny brown egg my grandfather used to keep on his desk. With enough pressure, a fingernail might permeate its shell, but in my guacamole-making ministrations, the pit doesn't yield to the threat of the knife. I can scoop out the flesh with a spoon, scrape clean the insides of the skin and slough them off to the side, but the core retains its shape, and given water and enough sunlight, will regenerate itself entirely. Inside that little pit is all of the knowledge of selfhood. What it takes to recreate the soft green flesh and the mottled skin and a whole army of these cores—all of those secrets are bundled up inside this little brown egg.

Where's my core? If you slice through all the extraneous stuff, where do you land? Where’s the little brown egg that holds all the secrets of regenerating me? A few of my friends know deep inside themselves exactly where the superfluous ends and the essential begins. Push them up against a figurative wall, and they'll willingly let the extra layers get stripped away. But when you approach The Core it's a no-fly zone. Get too close to the goods and they're snarling lionesses, protecting their kill, guarding the perimeters with fierce courage. These friends astonish me with self-knowledge and integrity.

I really don't know where that lies within me. I look back at the Jess of ten years ago and the Jess of ten minutes ago and I try to distinguish the nurture from the nature. How much of me is this fierce, impermeable core, and how much of it is the conversations I've had and the way I’ve let other people and other situations and other cultures stir up the ingredients? On the one hand I am intensely curious. I poke and prod at my soul, trying to find where the yielding stops and the resistance begins. I want to call in back-up, hand off the tools to those of you whom I trust, and say, “here, you have a go.” But I am terrified, too—that it will hurt, that maybe we’ll figure out there is no resistance... that I am just this anonymous composite of experiences, piled up precariously with no mortar to bind together the pieces.

Who the hell am I? Which is the part of me that would be absolutely the same whether I lived on a desert island or a hippie commune, whether I worked as a research physicist or a short-order cook, whether I get married and have twenty-six kids or stay single forever? The avocado flesh is useful and delicious—once. Then it's gone. It is the core that persists, regenerates, knows the secrets, holds the identity. Maybe finding it is my lifelong mission. Or maybe I already know where it is.