Four Life Lessons I Learned From Bread
What a COVID hobby taught me about human nature, community, and potential
In March 2020, when the world dove into a state of all-consuming limbo, I did something thoroughly cliche:
I picked up bread-baking.
For me, it was the realization of a childhood aspiration. My dad had always made his own bread when I was growing up, and I always knew that I wanted to be the kind of person that could make bread for myself any time I wanted. What better time to start? I was home, shut in, and desperate for something to do with my hands. I mixed up my first dough and jumped headfirst into a new hobby.
Hobbies aren’t easy, and they don’t always feel worthwhile. Sure, it seemed romantic to think of myself as a great baker, but it was a lot less romantic to scrape sticky dough off my favorite shirt after cutting into another disappointing sourdough boule. Practice may make progress, but practice also sucks.
But with time and repetition, I got it. I mean I really got it. The dough got less sticky. The boules got less disappointing. I saw the progress I was hoping and expecting to see. And as my hobby developed, it brought other types of progress — types I wasn’t expecting to see. It turns out, bread baking had a lot to teach me about how to live.
