Life Lessons of the Truffle: Self Indulgence vs. Receiving Joy
Lila, the lean hound, zigzagged across our path in the misty hazelnut grove, her nose to the ground. Suddenly, as if she’d heard her name called, she dashed to the foot of a nearby tree and began digging, paws blurring and earth flying through the air.
“Lila! Dai!” Her handler dragged her back, stroking and praising her, while we hurried to kneel at Lila’s paws. He handed us our tools: a short spade and a vanghetto — a kind of slender miniature axe, with one blunt end and one pronged.
“Be very gentle,” he warned. Carefully, we went to work. Lila had already revealed the outlines of what we sought: an earth-colored knob small enough to be cradled in the palm of your hand. We detached it from the soil — brushing as much earth off the sides as we could, seeding the find for next year’s harvest — and held it up to our noses, greedily inhaling the heady aroma. We had found one: a precious white Alba truffle.
Alba, a town in Piedmont, northern Italy, is known for its hazelnuts (the majority of the harvest from the grove we were hunting in would be sold to Nutella), its delicious nebbiolo wines (the best known examples are the Barolo and Barbaresco), and most famously, its fabulously aromatic and potent white truffles. White Alba truffles are among the most valuable in the world — they have been priced up to $10,000 per pound. We had come from London to spend a weekend at the International Truffle Festival, which runs in Alba for 6 weeks in October and November every year.
I expected to enjoy some terrific food while we were in Alba that weekend. And we did — crispy fried eggs topped with shaved truffle, fresh buttered spaghetti with truffle, even silky vanilla gelato piled with translucent curls of delicate truffle. It was even more fabulous than I had imagined. The whole town was pervaded by that joyous, contented buzz that one feels after pushing back from the table and loosening the top button of your jeans after a really fantastic meal.
Because another reason truffles are so precious is that they don’t have a long shelf life. Once they are taken from the ground, they are best eaten right away — or three to five days later, at the most. There we were, in the center of a culinary capital, surrounded by rare, delicious food that we were obliged to eat right away. I’m happy to report that everyone rose to the occasion. There was something wonderful about seeing a whole town tuck in to such precious delicacies without a smidgen of guilt. (Not that Italians ever evince much guilt around enjoying themselves, especially when it comes to food. I should know — I’m married to an Italian.)
The thing was, it didn’t feel like self-indulgence, this massive truffle-fest. Don’t get me wrong, it was indulgent to fly to Alba for a weekend of eating wonderful food, but I wouldn’t say it was self-indulgent. Does that feel like I’m splitting hairs? Self-indulgence is, to me, mindlessly eating an entire bag of salt and vinegar crisps on the couch, is binge-watching the latest Netflix series in a single weekend, is the flat, empty, alcoholic buzz on a Monday night, is blankly watching pornography in the dark. What I experienced in Alba that weekend, on the other hand, felt like something entirely different. It didn’t feel like we were being self-indulgent at all. It felt like we were receiving.
Receiving is not self-indulgent. Receiving is whole-heartedly accepting the good, the beautiful, the joyous aspects and moments of our lives. Where self-indulgence is oddly passive, receiving is active. Where self-indulgence is absent, receiving is present. In fact, we absolutely must be fully present, fully in the moment, to receive at all, because it is necessarily a fleeting experience. It is therefore vulnerable and very raw and somehow pure. It’s joyful. Even if it’s only eating a plate of simple spaghetti, and relishing every perfect al dente bite.
We are inclined, I think, to think of joy like a fine wine — something to be kept out of direct sunlight, in a climate-controlled space where it won’t get jostled, to be taken out reverently and enjoyed only “on a special occasion.” Why is this? Could it be that we are afraid of joy? There is a kind of peculiar paranoia here — as if we think that the second we let joy in, someone or something will snatch it away. Or as if we’re only allotted a small modicum of joy each, to be carefully rationed out over the course of a lifetime. Of course, taking a step back, this is blatantly illogical: the only person we deprive by rejecting joy — in whatever form it appears to us — is ourselves.
Since our weekend trip to Alba, I’m inclined to think of joy less like a fine wine and more like a truffle. When I scent it across my path, I intend to race to get my hands dirty digging it up, and then I intend to devour it — infuse my morning eggs with it, and my lunchtime pasta, and my evening ice cream. I intend to gorge myself on joy, when I find it, wherever I find it. Because I know that those moments will sustain me through the dark months when the Alba truffle is out of season, slowly re-growing in the damp, warm womb of the hazelnut groves.
