Beat the hell outa that dough!

 One of my favorite memories as a child was spending time at my grandparents house in the Pacific North West. It was the same thing almost every time I went. I would show up and run into their house to find my grandfather reclined in his brown pleather recliner watching Bugs Bunny. I don’t know how he did it, as this was obviously pre on demand or cable for that matter, but it seemed like it was always on when I showed up. I would crawl up into the recliner and sit back against him, smell his Old Spice aftershave and we would watch quietly laughing periodically at Elmer Fudds inability to “Hunt that Wascally Wabbit”. When Bugs Bunny Ended he would take me outside and we would do some “man work” cutting something, mowing something, or fixing something. After we completed our “man chores” we would clean up and go for a walk. We would walk the quarter of a mile to the coffee shop just down the road, my grandfather always finding change along the way as he shared his wisdom of manhood with me. He always carried a rock just in case a rabid dog came out to eat us alive (which never happened, but I thought was so cool). We would get to the coffee shop and always sit at the counter where the waitresses knew his name and he called them all “Kid”. He get a cup of coffee, me a hot chocolate and we would both get a plain cake donut to reward ourselves for our hard work. When we finished basking in the glory of our well earned winnings of cake donut and warm drink, my grandfather would assume his walking posture of hat on, and hands folded behind his back. But we never went straight home, we would always detour by the grocery store. My grandfather loved grocery stores. Not sure why he loved them so much, he owned and operated one in Cando North Dakota called the Red Owl after WW2. He might pick up a few things for grandma but he always let me pick out a 2 litter of soda to be rationed out during my stay at their house. Upon returning to the house I would patiently wait like a child waiting to open presents on Christmas morning for my grandmother to give me the signal. The signal that it was my time to do my thing that no one else could possible do as well or with as much joy as me. You see, on my grandmothers counter would be a large bowl with a kitchen towel over the top. As the day would progress the center of that towel would begin to bulge until the edges of the towel barely reached the rim of the large ceramic bowl. When the time was right, and grandma always knew when the time was right, no timers, just grandma instincts, grandma would remove the towel and that was my sign to go to work and beat the hell out of that dough. I think the technical term is kneed the dough but grandma, like she knew I needed the therapeutic outlet in the middle of my childhood chaos would let me punch the dough like I was trying to knock it out. On the edge of breaking out into a sweat and losing all the strength in my arms from punching myself out she would softly and sweetly announce, “thats perfect”. I mean I knew it wasn’t because as she took the bowl away to bake her fresh bread she would always finish what I started with her magic grandma touch. But this was my favorite thing. And when we would be eating fresh, hot, buttered roles at dinner I knew they tasted exquisite because I Mike Tyson’d the heck out of these things. This was quite possibly one of my favorite childhood activities. Punching Dough! But what was it that made the dough punchable? What was it that made the dough rise to the point that it could handle my fighting fury!? YEAST: *Baker's yeast is the common name for the strains of yeast commonly used in baking bread and bakery products, serving as a leavening agent which causes the bread to rise (expand and become lighter and softer) by converting the fermentable sugars present in the dough into carbon dioxide and ethanol. That’s a mouthful. Honestly I don't really understand how all that works so... I called my mom and asked what happens if you don’t put yeast in the bread? Her answer, “It doesn’t rise. It lays flat. It dies. Wont kill ya but its blah...” Yeast is the active ingredient that makes those precious carbs enjoyable. I mean you can have all the right ingredients, measured out just perfect, the oven set to the perfect temperature and removed from the oven at the precise moment, allowed to cool on Italian marble and sliced with a freshly sharpened  high carbon steel Wusthof blade, spread with fresh hand-churned buttered served on antique Lenox porcelain. But if you don't activate the ingredients the result of your efforts are wasted.

Is it possible that many of us are working hard to live a hope-filled life, but it seems like no matter what we do we can not sustain or find it? We cant rise. Seems like life is flat. Things just die. I mean were not dying but life seems blah... What is the active ingredient that sets us on a trajectory that hope is always with us no matter what situation we are facing? 

 Hope in our life is activated  in the right “place”. Have you ever been in what seemed like the wrong place, only to find out later it was the right place. Did you attend that school you hated in a town you loathed only to find your spouse there? Did you get that job that paid too little and was accompanied by so little enjoyment only to make the right connections, learn the right skills that are supporting you now? How about that painful experience, that loss, that disappointment, that failure that looked like it was going to be more than you could handle, but the wisdom you gained the people you met and fortitude you have today may have never forged had you not walked through the experience. I think it is easy to misunderstand where we actually find hope. It is easy to convince ourselves that the most hopeful people are the ones who face the least opposition. I would like to challenge that as a false belief, that actually hope is really found and activated in the difficult and darkest moments of life. That you actually don't even know you really have hope until it is activated. 

You are stronger than you could even imagine. You have survived 100% of your worst days. And today you’re smarter, stronger, wiser, and more courageous than you have ever been. So no matter what you are facing today know this - You got this! You’re going to make it! And you are winning today! Now beat the hell outa that dough enjoy the life you deserve. Have hope today.

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