Plenty of Saffron

Saffron is expensive, but if you skimp on it you might as well put it right into the trash, because you can’t taste it. Using too little is as wasteful as using too much. I know better, and yet lately I haven’t been using enough saffron. I have been denying myself as if rationing the saffron, and contracting the air I’m using would ease my anxiety of not having enough. Yes, I’m aware of the irony of talking about a luxury spice and my sense of scarcity in the same sentence.

There are times in my life when I gasp for breath beneath the suffocating blanket of scarcity. I will not say I am a victim of scarcity; I am a volunteer, I willingly throw that blanket over my own head, and sometimes I hug it so close it’s all I can see. I struggle under it, and rather than stretching out my arms and throwing it off I pull it tighter and make it ever harder to make out the real world just beyond its ribbon edges.

I have cabinets filled with the evidence of my episodes of scarcity. Half-used of jars of something dear that I love so much I don’t use it, until it spoils and I must throw it out. I save it all for some special day that never seems to arrive. Last week at the mall I was overcome with the unmistakable smell of buttery popcorn, and I followed my nose to a kiosk selling tiny bags of popcorn for $6.00. Scarcity or not, that seemed outrageous when I knew I had excellent popcorn at home, and a jar of smoky cheese topping I’ve been rationing carefully.

I went home and popped my popcorn, melted the butter and liberally shook on my cheese topping. It was awful. I looked at the jar, and the handwriting on the label read “purchased 4/12”. It wasn’t an unopened jar; about one third of it had been used, but I threw the remaining two thirds in the trash. Had I really been waiting four years to allow myself this small pleasure? No wonder I’m still in therapy!

That’s what scarcity does to me. It makes me ruin things, and deny myself, and waste what is most precious, whether it’s time with good friends, smoky hills cheese topping or saffron. When I am in the clutches of scarcity I am my worst self. I become stingy, fearful and worst of all envious of every cent I see other people freely spending; I focus on what they have, and what I do not. When I come to my senses I realize that anyone who is fretting over how much saffron to use is richer than most people.

The world tilts, the blanket falls away, my view expands to take in all I have, and finally I can breathe. The shift from scarcity to abundance is something you read about often, yet making that shift falls into the category of simple but not easy. I am not going to tell you how to make this shift, I can barely articulate how I have managed to do it, and though I’ve done it again and again what gets me there, or what breaks the cycle is different each time.

It’s easy to say it was throwing out my bowl of popcorn that broke the spell, or the tulips I allowed myself to splurge on, but the work has been happening beneath the surface. In fact, if you’ve been reading along for the last few months whether you realize it or not you’ve been observing me slowly loosen my grip and emerge from that smothering blanket of scarcity. I have been taking action to make things better, and that is what has made all the difference.

If you are saving that special bottle of wine, skimping on the butter or waiting to wear that beautiful sweater, stop waiting. Buy the tulips, use plenty of saffron, and enjoy every minute you can. The more I make my life lovable the more I love it. If scarcity makes me the worst version of myself, abundance makes me the best.