I’ve had a number of experiences that have genuinely changed the way I perceive the world. When they land I am raw, vulnerable, and open to new considerations. I don’t always know what to do with this afterwards, but ignoring it is not an option. The change is not simply in my mind nor simply in my body; instead it’s a total reorganization of my self and the world I perceive.
The sources for these phenomena are varied in my experience: a stillbirth, the birth and several events during the upbringing of my living daughter, an incident with my aging father, several profound psychedelic journeys, and a number of other extraordinary moments in my life. Once, it happened over a slice of prime rib.
The Prime Rib
As part of my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary, we met up with them and my sister’s family in the city at a well-known prime rib restaurant for an early dinner. My wife, daughter, and myself had never been here and were first to arrive as the restaurant was beginning to open. We sat down at the table at the rear, peering out across the vastness of this old room that’s been serving prime cuts of beef for some 75 years. They are old school-y and very outspoken about their adherence to this aesthetic. NA beer is not one of their options, per the waiter’s retort to my question.
The rest of our family arrived and sat down just as other tables began to fill and more activity was arising from the kitchen. The waiter came over and introduced himself and got everyone’s name. He remembered them too. He was superficially friendly, with a weird energy about him; something slightly off-putting about the way he talked and the way he referred to us each by our names, all eight of us, throughout the meal. Perhaps it was the performative nature of the job that made him feel less than genuine. Perhaps it was some of the blunt comments in between pleasantries and rehearsed lines.
I was hungry. Very hungry. I’d been told that when you go to this restaurant you should “bring your appetite” and it was an early dinner, so I skipped lunch. The menu options were basically prime rib or prime rib, with a variety of sides. Salad came first, prepared tableside, in a large bowl floating in a larger bowl of ice water to keep it cold and spin it ostentatiously while they dressed and tossed it. I felt my face start to tense as I watched, it looked less like tossing and more like beating. I ate the flaccid lettuce when served with the chilled fork he handed me. The salad wasn’t bad so much as limp, lifeless. I didn’t see how a chilled fork would make up for this.
I hadn’t been paying as much attention to the surroundings as the salad beating had been my focus. The restaurant was really starting to get busy. Waiters darted about, patrons walked to their tables, busboys brought out more silverware and glasses… and then I saw the large metal carts come out with the prime rib. They were like coffins. Big stainless steel coffins. Pushed by big men wearing big hats with big knives and big meat. I had the distinct feeling of descent.
Then the beef arrived. The waiter set down my portion in front of me along with the creamed spinach and mashed potatoes. There may have been creamed corn too; it all kind of blended together. The prime rib was very pink, loose, floppy. Except for the scant edges there’s no love for the Maillard Reaction in prime rib. All the food, the steak and the sides and the salad, seemed to have the same loose posture. I felt a switch flip and went mostly silent for the rest of the meal. My family would ask me about it later with some concern.
As I began eating, everything—the steak, the spinach, the waiter, the room itself—began to blend together into a sloppy, almost gelatinous, kind of texture. I ate anyway, quickly; I was so hungry. It was mindless, mechanical. I ate until I had finished everything.
My stomach started to ache. I discreetly excused myself and headed to the restroom. The dining room had become an orgy of activity. Patrons slurping down wine and beef. Waiters carrying more steak knives to tables. Busboys on hands and knees, mopping up a mess below one of the carving carts. I haphazardly navigated the labyrinth of people and metal coffins and spinning salad bowls. There was a thickness to the air that made my movements clumsy and slow. Or was it something more solid? Then I thought I saw it, if only for a second: a vast spider web of sticky karmic sinew weaving through every cubic inch. “I’ll need a machete.” I whispered to myself with pursed lips and clenched fists. The carving knife on the cart beside me briefly caught my eye, but I decided against it. I’d have to push my way through by hand. Somehow I reached the bathroom at the back of the restaurant. I pushed the door open.
I hoped to find respite within, but as I stepped in the chaos continued. A wall of large, heavy men loomed in wait for the two stalls and two urinals while others hurriedly elbowed their way to the sink after defecating, perhaps anticipating returning to their plates of meat. I stood and waited in a corner, clutching my stomach. A urinal opened up. I wasn’t sure what good it would do, but I went to it. I didn’t need to pee. I didn’t know what I needed. One big bald man shuffled in directly behind me, waiting for my urinal, breathing heavily. I swear I could smell the sweat on him. In my peripheral vision everything seemed warped and off kilter. Are those horns on his forehead? I shook my head and blinked a few times.
When I arrived back at our table, I’d calmed slightly. My Dad asked if everything was okay. It wasn’t, but I told him “yeah, just a little stomach ache. Probably ate too fast”. I felt caught between this strange experience and wanting to be present and gracious with my family. I quietly waited out the rest of the meal, joining the conversation when I could, and even having a bite or two of dessert. I ordered an espresso, which only added jitters to my already jittery mood. When we emerged from the restaurant and into the afternoon sunlight, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. I could have kissed the dirty concrete.
I didn’t eat beef for months. And it wasn’t the usual reasons like animal or environmental welfare. I simply had no desire for it. It’s worth mentioning that I have an underlying cognitive dissonance about eating meat, beef especially. It’s no secret that the industry is fueling huge amounts of waste, environmental impact, and poor treatment of animals. But before this event, I kept on eating it anyway. It’s a pretty delicious source of protein. But now it wasn’t about rationalizing. Nor was it about how I feel about beef. It’s about how beef feels to me.
The Burger
A couple months later, almost by accident, we went to In-N-Out Burger. My daughter and I were driving east to go camping in the Sierras. We stopped at one of those exits with the typical food fare billboards peeking up. The diner we first drove into looked dodgy at best. I’m all for shady diners, but I didn’t have a means of locking the soft-top camper shell and the last thing I wanted was to get our camp stove stolen. So, we went to the other side of the highway and my daughter pointed out the red and yellow sign down the way. “OK…” I said reluctantly, resigning myself to a grilled cheese, “let’s go to In-N-Out.”
When we went inside, I decided I might experiment and break my several month streak sans beef and order a basic burger. It had been a good long while since that journey into the nine circles of prime rib. What the heck. I ordered a #1 for each of us mistaking it for the hamburger meal. It wasn’t; It was the double double. Two beef patties topped with cheese, glistening with grease. I ate it. I ate the whole thing. The fries and soda too. Then I ate my daughter’s remaining half burger and some of her fries like some kind of vulture. Mindless, mechanical. And when I was done eating, a familiar achiness arose in my stomach.
We got back on the road feeling bloated and tired, Google Maps leading us to our next waypoint. Oddly, it took us off on a country road, away from the highway we’d been routed on before the dinner break. It was, at first, serene and idyllic. I felt calmed by the fields and general quiet. Then the cows appeared. Feedlot after feedlot rolled past the windows for miles. The smell was sharp and overwhelming, the many animals dirty and packed close together in pens. The ‘Happy Cows of California’ you see in the commercials they were not. My stomach turned. Was this the sequel?
Uncertainty
It’s been a month or so since the In-N-Out part of the story. I’ve not eaten beef since and have not desired it. The signal from the experience still feels strong, but this wasn’t like a stamp of “USDA CERTIFIED CERTAINTY”. I came away with a lot of I-don’t-knows.
I don’t know where the experience came from. It struck me suddenly and felt more like it was from without than from within. Actually, it felt like it was from both and from neither. Different traditions give different names to that possibility. I don’t know how to distinguish between them and it’s only recently that I’ve even entertained this as an option. Finally, I wonder if knowing the source even matters? We can’t actually know for certain anyways.
I don’t know exactly what to do with this experience. At this point, I find that I carry some strong feelings from it and that I feel different. It feels neither fixed nor temporary.
I don’t know if I will continue to exclude beef from my diet. Right now, I don’t have any desire for it, and that seems to be enough. Perhaps that will change, perhaps it will not. These actions I’m taking don’t feel forced.
I don’t know if I should apply this more broadly, i.e. to other types of animal. It seems somewhat arbitrary to me at times to only apply this to cows. But this experience was about cows, so, that’s where I’m at for now. Sushi restaurant next? Haha.
I also don’t know what authority this experience deserves. It shook me up and reorganized my inner pantry. I’m still trying to figure out where things are in the cupboards, and that’s okay.
Despite all I didn’t know, I did know that a story about myself began forming around that choice.
Identity
I can feel some identity starting to form around this change. It’s subtle right now. This identity component, the proclamation “I don’t eat beef” kind of makes me uncomfortable. Is that because it’s new? I start other new habits and don’t feel that tension, so I don’t think that’s it. On one hand, identity formation helps to make habits or choices stick. On the other hand, it creates rigidity and mostly negates both reason and feeling. The choice becomes a default along the lines of “…this is the way we’ve always done it ‘round here”. And that makes me uncomfortable, especially for big notions like this one.
I prefer to maintain my mutability, so I’m minding this closely.
Reorganization
So, what am I to make of this? This experience was surreal, like I had tripped and fallen down the rabbit hole. Its effects didn’t so much stay with me, but became a part of me. So why did that change me more than years of facts? The more I’ve thought about it, the less this experience has seemed like persuasion. I think the right word for it is reorganization.
Reorganization isn’t a small revision. It feels more like a bomb than a nudge. It affects the whole organism. It didn’t stay with me, it became part of me. It’s not just the mind, or just the body, or just some change to a perception or a habit. It felt like a shift in my perspective of the world and therefore in the world I know; the one I perceive through my senses and think about each day.
Some experiences arrive without warning (our stillbirth). Others we seek out (psilocybin). And some of them have been quietly ticking away for years before something sets it off (prime rib).
As sudden as the beef experience felt, I think it had been broiling away for years. The restaurant was simply the match to the dry kindling.
Carrying
Ultimately, I find that the main thing I am carrying is uncertainty, but carrying it with humility. Being okay with the I-don’t-knows and okay with not being able to put the feelings concisely into words and sentences.
But, there’s an ongoing tension in this. There’s a danger in ignoring the experience on the one hand, and another in surrendering uncritically on the other. So, I could simply dismiss the experience as “just indigestion”, or conversely boldly proclaim “the Universe told me to stop eating beef”. I don’t think either is the way forward, instead there’s a middle path that takes the experience seriously without treating it as infallible. I am changed and that’s great, I will listen intently and follow the path where it leads.
Whatever their source, these experiences remind me that I am not fixed. Identity, habits, even perceptions can suddenly change. We are all mutable, and that’s a profoundly hopeful way to view humanity.