A Zen Philosopher once said that man's
greatest work is done when he is not calculating or thinking. Staring at the lump of dough in front of me I would never have imagined that
I'd be closer to understanding what that dude was talking about.
My Zen Teacher
A little bit of background story. I was living in Hokkaido working in a restaurant called Heart n' Tree that sells bread, pizza, salads, and curries where a lot of the ingredients are locally sourced. I was in charge of the pizza and making the bread.
The Restaurant Floor
View of the local area
The Garden Salad
The 3 Different Pizzas
The first step of making bread rolls is
to weigh each piece of dough so that each one weighs the same as the
last. Initially, I was really slow taking a piece and
throwing it on the scale. Too much? Take some off. Too little? Put
some more on. However, after I got into the flow of things I put the scale away and I instinctively knew what 100 grams of
dough felt like in my hands.
Swear to God I did not measure this beforehand.
Then you've got to shape the dough into something sexy. My first roll took me ages
because I had to make it look the way I was taught. I was constantly stopping, looking at my work, and redoing it. However, by the
twenty third roll the bread was just coming out without me even thinking about it.
Proof of my amazing bread rolling skills
After I perfected my bread rolling technique I understood what that Zen Philosopher meant. The best work that we do is when our bodies do the work organically and our brains shut off and go into a calm Zen state. The irony is that when you realize you are in this state you start to get bored because the work has become robotic and mindless. In order to get into a Zen state you have to find a balance between work being too difficult and too easy, but when you go too far on either side your brain starts calculating and thinking making you lose your sense of calm.
My bread rolling skills after 2 weeks
My bread rolling skills after a month
The tricky thing about staying in a state of Zen is that you need to keep changing how you do things. If I kept rolling bread the same way for a month I would have gotten bored easily, but I kept modifying my technique so that it became more difficult and my product became sexier.
In life I think we need to constantly do this in order to keep things fresh and interesting. If we never change or never challenge ourselves then we risk getting too comfortable and prevent ourselves from growing.
Thanks for reading ;)
