Cut the onions
Two summers ago a group of friends and I decided to rent an old self-service hotel for a weekend which had the rule that groups staying there had to cook for the everyone staying at the hotel for at least one night, which was around 50 people. A friend of mine knew I was a decent cook and liked cooking for large groups of people and so they said I was the most competent to do the dinner service and I said yes without thinking much. As the day progressed, this decision paralyzed me, “was I going to make a good meal?”, “what happened if I failed?”,“can I pretend sick so someone else can take my spot?” were some of the trains of thought in my head, as I went through the kitchen sorting out the produce, figuring out the dietary requirements of the guests and thinking of a recipe that'd be both great for vegetarians and vegans. I started to wonder if I even made the right decision.
Dinner was to be served at 8 p.m. sharp and that meant I had to start prep by 5. I gathered a team of volunteers and we brainstormed a quick menu. I was still losing myself over the details, figuring out the ratios for 10 kilos of rice and water and figuring out how many calories one needed in a meal to feel full. Between all this thinking a friend came by, took a huge onion and started chopping it. It was an instinctive sign for me, that the process had begun and that now all the plans had to be put into action. Until that point everything was theoretical and I was fretting over every possible failure but the sight of the onion being cut put me in action mode, where one step led to the other and I ended up supervising and cooking the meal in less than two hours. I later told my friend that the onion cutting was the pivotal moment for me the entire day, which changed me from planning mode to action mode and asked her why she started cutting an onion even though I explicitly didn't ask her to. “you always need an onion” was her reply, and it still rings in my head.
Here's the thing, I thought for most of my life that I needed permission to do things. Permission from parents, employers, friends or from some external agent for me to do things. I waited and procrastinated over outcomes rather than actually doing things, which left a lot of dreams unfinished in the dreaming phase and the feeling of having missed out or being too late to the scene. With each passing day, the not doing has had its own weight on me and this moment with the onion made me realize that I can move mountains if I can just decide to just start. Since that day, it just clicked in me that I can start without thinking much and figure out along the way and it has improved my life for the better. If there's a task that you're wanting to do or you're thinking about that big creative project and are waiting for things to align perfectly, here's my permission for you start and start by cutting the onion.