A Tapas and Teapots Approach to Life

Finding the sacred in the daily round.

Tapas is a celebration of life — Jose Andres

The very sight of a teapot puts a smile on the face of most people…They are a subtle reminder of all that is good in this world. — Barbara Roberts

Photo by Maria Tyutina.

It’s 2020, not only a new year but a new decade. It’s a time to take a totally new approach to life, and mine is going to be one of tapas and teapots. A bit of this and a bit of that.

I’ll take a bit of celebration (tapas), and a little introspection (teapots), an outward life of community and service(tapas), and an inward life of finding the sacred in my daily round (teapots). I’ll make a feast of the everyday, and allow for a little indulgence (we all need it!) But I’ll also endeavor to maintain a sense of balance. Throughout this year, I’ll not forget the comforts and pleasures of coming home to myself, and the age old ritual of taking time to rest, reflect, rejuvenate and — when needed — reroute.

For me tapas and teapots represent two sides of a meaningful life that I’ve been trying to construct for years. Most people know tapas as Spain’s tasty small plates — but they’re not only bite-sized bits of indulgence, they signify a way of celebrating the daily rhythms of our lives.

Most of the last decade I spent in Spain, though I was also in my native United States. I was trying on different ways of life, trying to figure out which one was best for me. Through much struggle and striving I learned that we’re only partly in charge of setting our own course. Much of what happens to us, what we enjoy and who we are is determined by our surroundings and circumstances. But this isn’t to say that we’re helpless agents in our lives. On the contrary, we can be happy just about wherever we end up if we find the right balance between our daily participation in the world and the inner, spiritual search that charts our course and needs to make sense of our journeys.

I happen to have a deep-rooted love of adventure, and that’s how I wound up in Barcelona to begin with. At first I had secret guilt about living there, off of the beaten path of college, career, kids and retirement. I married a man from Spain and we had a young son, and I wanted him to experience his origins. I have since come to realize that the pull to travel and experience new cultures is something innate to all of us, whether it is motivated by finding work, marrying or just following one’s heart. It is especially strong in me, like it was for my German and English ancestors who immigrated to the United States in the late 1800’s. (Unlike those brave women, nowadays when we are called to adventure, we don’t have to say goodbye to our home countries forever.)

What I loved immediately about Spain was its culture of community, the strong bonds formed by friends that stretch over years and around the world if need be. No one eats tapas alone. One is always surrounded by friends, boisterous conversation, and sometimes debate, and often yelling followed by laughter. In the culture of Spain, you always find time to be in community, even if you’re an introvert. Tapas won’t fill you up, but your cheeks will hurt from laughing, and you’ll skip dinner, nourished by living the good life. (And tapas are always accompanied by a drink:) Maybe their love of connection is why Spain has such a high life expectancy, despite the love of smoking and staying out all night.

I love Spain’s culture of food as gathering and community, but one of the most surprising discoveries about living abroad was that I also recognized what I loved about my own culture and way of life, given that for the first time I had the opportunity to view it from a distance.

In Barcelona, as a young parent trying to juggle career and motherhood and finding a community as an expat, I struggled. My upbringing had stressed college, career and personal growth as paths to fulfillment, but in my adopted culture no one talked about any of that. In fact, in Spain it’s possible to know someone for a quite a while and have no idea what they consider their life purpose or calling to be. Growing up in the States we’d talk about our goals and dreams at just about every encounter, making it easy to determine what people value and believe in. In Spain, as I found out quickly from my husband, people learn who you are based on where you’re from, who your family is and where you went to school.

Well, I grew up in rural Colorado, lived with my siblings in a mixed family with my mother’s second husband, and graduated from the local high school, so people knew basically nothing about me at all. Most people didn’t even know where Colorado was, though all seemed to know a lot about the United States, especially cool places like San Francisco and New York. Being in a culture in which my mental frameworks were out of whack meant that I felt lonely, isolated and out of place. Other people I know who have lived in multiple countries and cultures have also expressed this.

I decided to stop focusing on the negative and look for the positive, so I threw myself wholeheartedly into the parts of the culture that did resonate with me, namely — cooking, eating, dining, laughing, celebrating and enjoying life in general. Because I wasn’t focused on my career (as I had been in the States), my energy was freed up to explore other interests that I’d never had time for while juggling life as a parent and professional.

I delved into the traditions of Barcelona’s cuisine. I cooked at my uncle in law’s restaurant and found deep joy in watching onions slowly caramelize into sofrito (an onion base) over the course of several hours. I took classes at Barcelona’s cooking school and debated Spanish and U.S. lifestyles while dicing carrots, onions and celery with my team. I made friends with my husband’s friends’ wives and got introspective about how Catalan women managed such a relaxed attitude about their children. My family joined the annual hike in the Pyrenees organized by my husband’s group of friends from elementary school(which numbered at least thirty not counting the kids). Together we mourned the passing of one in the group, and I realized that finally we were friends for real.

I love Spain and its celebration of friendship, community and extroverts. But a part of me also loves the comforts and quite revelations of a more contemplative life. Living among Spanish people, I missed the kind of closeness in relationships that develops in deep conversations one-on-one over a pot of tea. I’d always valued the spirituality in daily simplicity and times away from the life of the group. Life had become unbalanced, with so much community and so little individuality, and I dreamed of my children also knowing the positive parts of the American culture — our grit and do-it-yourself attitudes about our goals and dreams.

This was one of reasons that drew us back to the United States. Once back though, I again felt like an outsider. Now it was the values of community living and daily celebration that I did not see reflected in my surroundings. There was no more tapas with friends in the plaza (at least after six anyway). In Barcelona my kids developed friendships almost seamlessly. A gang of children could always be found to hang out with in any neighborhood plaza, and adults watched out for each others’ kids as though they were their own. In Northern California children had busier schedules than their parents and needed to be booked well in advance.

I found myself missing the simple joys of Barcelona that made daily life feel so sublime yet adventurous. Things like shopping at local markets, living life without a clear schedule, never thinking about retirement, letting the kids get lost and find their way home, and all that conversation over drinks and tapas after yet another unfulfilling day at work.

But on another level, I did find nourishment for my soul. The United States is a large country with an unending menu of options — there’s something for everyone. Just as I had done in Barcelona, I found myself seeking out positive daily experiences in my native country. There was much to be enjoyed — from road tripping to the Grand Canyon, to seeing my son and daughter learn and grow and develop their own hopes and dreams, to reconnecting with old friends and sitting down for a mug of tea as I had so missed.

My husband and I have continued to spend part of the year in both the United States and Spain. For a time I felt the need to choose, between two places and two ways of life, and even what sometimes feels like two parts of myself. Am I the Colorado adventurer who loves daily activity, community living and the good life over all else? Or is it the quiet and profound insights over a cup of tea with pen in hand away from my children, friends and family that really nourish my soul?

I realized that we don’t need to choose between these different parts of ourselves. In spite of what makes sense or whatever story the mind might come up with, I’m equally the expat, mother, homebody, and home chef as I am the contemplative seeker looking for meaning in daily life. It’s as much our participation in daily life as it is our contemplation of it that feed the soul. The spiritual life is both the tapas and the teapots, and for this decade, at least, I’ll do both.