The Tinder Conk and the Spark: A Love Story
Those who know me well, know that my guilty pleasure TV show is the bachelor/bachelorette. People ask me all the time why this of all shows has become my ride or die entertainment. Usually I just laugh and say something about loving the drama or enjoying the cathartic experience of yelling at the TV, but the more I think about it there is something deeper to my love for it. Let me start by summarizing the show for you if you are not a die hard fan. One person, our bachelor or bachelorette dates 30 people of the opposite gender over the course of eight weeks. They go on fabulous dates all around the world and each week people are eliminated until the finale when . So what keeps me around besides the drama of it all? I think it is the spark of possibility. The spark that these new relationships start with which quickly fizzles but has so much potential. A spark that, in one way or another we can all relate to.
My friend Oliver and I were watching the semi-final of the latest season recently when he shared some wisdom about this spark. “Sparks don’t last”, he said. It saddened me at first but he followed it up, adding, “But sparks can light a fire and a well tended fire can last a lifetime”. Such a powerful metaphor to come out of such a superficial show. But I think it is one that pertains to much more than just romantic love.
This metaphor is of course true of all relationships including those we have to goals, projects, and schemes of all types. Big goals are started with a spark of passion and often succeed or fail based on how well we keep fueling that spark. This has been true to my relationship with starting the Crowded Table Collective.
When I first had the idea for Crowded Table it was the first big project I had been excited about in a while. I stayed up all hours of the night working on the website and figuring out what our programming would look like. I had a lot of big visions that looking back on, would have led to some serious burnout. I am lucky that I have a community who was able to help me transform my sparks of excitement into an actual fire. They helped me stoke that fire by asking me important questions, sharing lessons they had learned while community organizing, and also giving me space to breathe and make some mistakes for myself. I now know that the fuel to keep my fire going is community.
Along the way I have also learned that a fire can still have sparks, and the more you fuel your fire, the more you lean into community and reciprocate that leaning, the bigger your fire grows and the more people you can warm with it.
The photo I chose for the blog this week is of a mushroom called a Tinder Conk. Back in the day it was hollowed out and used to carry the embers of a fire from one place to another. Often travelers would use it when leaving their home to start a new one. The sparks from those embers, tucked away inside a mushroom, lit fires in many hearths which created gathering places for communities.
