The Romaine Revelation: Why the Journey Makes the Bite Better

Good Day or Good Evening?

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Hello, good day, or good evening, or good whatever time you are in. I do not judge your clock. I only judge your pace. This is Turtle Speed.

Dr. Bob Turtle Doctor: Romaine Lettuce

SPEAKER_00 0:30

I am your host, Dr. Bob, Turtle, Doctor, Philosopher of the Bask Rock, and today I want to talk about my favourite subject. Do not guess. I said do not guess. I can hear you guessing. It is lettuce. Romaine lettuce, specifically. I have loved Romaine lettuce my whole life. I love the crunch, I love the green, I love the way it arrives from the garden of my humans, sliced exactly so. If I were a romantic poet, I would write sonnets to it. I am not a romantic poet. I am a turtle with a doctorate, but I feel the feeling. Let me tell you how this love began. When I was very small, the size of a walnut, a very handsome walnut, I did not know about Romaine. I was given other things, pellets. Pellets are fine. Pellets are like the paperwork of food. They get the job done. Nobody writes poems about paperwork. Then one day a hand reached into my world, and it placed before me a leaf, long, pale at the bottom, dark green at the top, with a spine down the middle like a little road. I looked at it, it looked at me. Well, it did not look at me. It is lettuce. But there was a moment between us. I bit. And I understood, for the first time, that life could be crisp. Now some of you will say, Dr. Bob, what about iceberg lettuce? No, I will say only this about iceberg lettuce. It is mostly water pretending to be a vegetable. It is the small talk of lettuces. You eat it, and afterward you cannot remember what you discussed. And kale? Kale is very serious. Kale went to a very expensive school and wants you to know I respect kale. I do not love kale. There is a difference, my friends, and in my experience, most of life is learning that difference. Romaine is honest, romaine has structure and softness at the same time. The spine gives you the crunch, the leaf gives you the tenderness. If you ask me, that is a pretty good way to build a person too, a little backbone, a little leaf. But this is not an episode only about how good romaine tastes. This is an episode about why it sometimes tastes better than other times, because I, Dr. Bob, have made a discovery, and like all important discoveries, I made it by accident while trying to do something else, mostly nap. Let me describe my habitat so you can see it in your mind. On one side I have my basking rock. Warm, flat, excellent. Directly above it, the heat lamp, my personal sun, which my humans switch on each morning like a sunrise that takes requests. On the other side there is water, and between them there is my walking bridge. A little ramp of wood, slightly tilted, with small ridges so my feet can grip. Now here is the interesting part. If I simply sit on my basking rock, and a leaf of romaine appears right in front of me, I eat it, fine, pleasure, good. A solid seven out of ten experience. But if the same leaf is placed at the very far end of my walking bridge, oh then, then it is a quest. First I notice it, green at the far end. Maybe it is lettuce, maybe it is a trick of the light. I extend my neck, I squint, it is lettuce. Then I make my decision. This is not nothing. The basking rock is warm. The rock is always warm. The rock has never once let me down. To leave it is to give something up. So I ask myself the question every adventurer must ask. Is the leaf worth the leaving? The answer is always yes. But I like to ask. It makes me feel thoughtful. I leave the basking rock. I step onto the bridge. I consider the terrain. There is the ridge, there is the other ridge. There is a small damp spot I call the swamp of regret.

The Secret to Eating Well

SPEAKER_00 4:55

I have slipped there before. I go around it now. Experience, my friends, is just remembering where the wet spots are. Halfway across, I stop, I look back at the rock. I look ahead at the leaf. I am for a moment a turtle between two worlds. And I will be honest with you, this is my favorite part, and for many years I did not realize it was my favorite part. I thought my favorite part was the lettuce. I keep going. The leaf gets bigger. I can smell it now. That clean, cool, green smell like the idea of rain. My whole body is leaning toward it, not fast. I am never fast, but committed. And when I finally arrive and take my first bite, it tastes better. It always tastes better. Same leaf, same turtle, better. I have tested this many times. As a scientist, I must. Rock lettuce, good. Bridge lettuce, magnificent. The results are, as we say in the laboratory, very reproducible. So why? Why does the same leaf taste better at the end of the bridge? I have three theories. I am a doctor. I always have three theories. Sometimes I have four, but I hide one for emergencies. Theory number one. I wanted it for longer. When the lettuce appears in front of my face, the wanting and the having happen at the same moment. There is no time to look forward to anything. But on the bridge, the wanting has room to stretch out. It walks with me. And human scientists, who are sometimes almost as smart as turtles, have noticed something similar about you. A great deal of the brain's excitement happens in the anticipation of a good thing, not only in the receiving of it. The looking forward is not the waiting room for the joy, it is part of the joy. This is why a vacation you plan for three months feels different than one somebody surprises you with on a Tuesday. You got to live in it before it arrived. Theory number two. I participated. On the rock, lettuce happens to me. On the bridge, I happened to the lettuce. I chose it, I crossed for it, I went around the swamp of regret for it, and things we take part in we value more. You humans know this. The bookshelf you built yourself, crooked with one extra screw you do not understand, you love that bookshelf more than a perfect one from the store. Because a little of you is inside it. Theory number three. I was paying attention, this is the big one. On the rock I am half asleep. I eat without noticing I am eating. But on the bridge every sense is awake. I am watching, smelling, feeling the ridges under my feet. By the time I arrive I am completely present, so when I bite, I am all the way there for it. The lettuce did not change, I changed. The walk tuned me like an instrument, and then the lettuce got to play a better song. You see, I am a doctor, I cannot help it. Everything becomes a lesson.

Turtle Advice for Humans

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Now, let us talk about you. From my habitat, I have a very good view of the kitchen, and I watch you humans. I watch you very closely. You do not know this. Well, now you know this. And I see you rushing. You rush from one thing to the next. The car, the job, the phone, the next, and the next and the next. You pour the coffee, and before it is in the cup, you are already looking at the phone. You eat breakfast standing up, as if the chair has offended you. You walk past the window, and there is beautiful morning light, and you do not see it because you are already in the car in your mind, and in the car you will already be at the job in your mind, and at the job you will be at dinner in your mind. You are never where your feet are. This is very confusing for a turtle. For me, where my feet are is where I am. There is no other option. My feet are slow, so I have had plenty of time to get to know the place. Now, some wise people will tell you stop chasing things. Be still. Want nothing, I disagree, respectfully. But with my whole shell. Here is my advice from the glass. The chasing is not the enemy. Wanting is good, wanting got me off the rock. Wanting is why there is a bridge at all. A turtle who wants nothing will simply bask until he becomes a decorative stone. The problem is not the chasing. The problem is when you skip the middle, when you treat the walk as an inconvenience between you and the thing. When you want the leaf so badly that you do not see the bridge or the light, or the swamp of regret, or the funny little fact that you are a creature on a journey towards something green. That middle part, the walking, the seeing the leaf ahead, the deciding to go get it. That is not the price you pay for the lettuce. That is the lettuce. Let me say it another way, for the humans in the back. The destination is one bite, the journey is the whole meal. My grandmother had a saying, she was a very wise old tortoise, very round, very opinionated, and she lived to be extremely old, which in our family is not an achievement. It is a hobby. She used to say in Russian Tishe Yedesh, Dalshe Budesh, it means the slower you go, the farther you will get. As a young turtle, I thought this was an excuse. I thought of course a tortoise says this. It is like a fish saying the wetter you are, the better. Very convenient. But now that I am older and a doctor, and have crossed the bridge many hundreds of times, I think she meant something else. I do not think she meant always be slow. I think she meant arrive with all of yourself. If you rush, you get there, but you leave pieces of you scattered along the road. Your attention is behind you. Your worry is ahead of you. Only a small part of you actually shows up to eat the lettuce. Go slowly enough, and you arrive home. She also used to say, Never trust a heron. This is a different lesson. We will do an episode about herons. It will be very dark. And now, as always, your assignment. Do not worry, there is no grade. I am a very lenient professor. My office hours are whenever I am awake.

The Secret to Chasing Things

SPEAKER_00 12:12

Step one. Find one thing you are chasing. It can be big, a new job, a finished project, a dream you have carried for years, or it can be very small, a cup of tea, the end of a work day, the moment you get home. Step two. Instead of only getting it, enjoy the walk to it. If it is the tea, watch the water begin to move before it boils, smell the leaves, hold the warm cup for a moment before you drink. If it is a big dream, pause somewhere in the middle, look back at how far you have come and look ahead at the leaf. Let yourself be a creature between two worlds just for a moment. Step three. Take the long way, just once this week. Walk the extra block. Drive the road with the trees. Look at the light. It does not need to be efficient. Turtles are not efficient. We have survived for over two hundred million years anyway. Think about that. And then when you finally arrive, when you take the bite, notice how it tastes. I promise you, it will taste better.

Turtle Speed

SPEAKER_00 13:25

That is all for today's episode of Turtle Speed. Thank you for walking the bridge with me. You were very patient. You would make an excellent turtle. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a human who is always rushing. Do not tell them it is about lettuce. Let it be a surprise. Surprises are good, just not as good as anticipation, which, if you were listening, you now know. Until next time, slow down, look up, and chew thoroughly. I am Dr. Bob, and now I am going to go basking. Actually, I think there is something green at the end of the bridge. The bridge calls to meet.