What a Baguette Taught Me About Being Human

If a falling piano can take your life in an instant of cartoon irony, can't you also begin to live in an instant?

Yes, we are the sum total of our past experiences and our future expectations, hopes, and dreams. But we are also the people we choose to be moment to moment. People will often state character flaws as immutable, and thus forgivable, aspects of their being. "I'm a selfish person." No you're not, or at least you don't have to be.

The beginning of the end of one of my romantic relationships was marked by what my friends know as "The Bread Incident". I was hosting a dinner party for some acting classmates in the Bay Area. I had the stump of a baguette in my hand which I was looking forward to eating. My then girlfriend asked for a bite, to which I replied "No." Let us say, because of my selfishness and insensitivity the rest of the evening did not go well.

I would like to say that days after our eventual breakup and some reflection I came to realize the error of my ways and was living as my new better self. I wasn't. I was the same selfish bread-hording person.

It wasn't until I was out to dinner with my family a few months later that I arrived at a moment of clarity. My mother asked for a bite of my meal and I replied "I ordered this because I want to eat it." My grandmother was apalled, and said to me with great disappointment "Donovan, Keiths share."

Mine is not a family with a strong sense of honor or connection to our ancestors. Sure there were stories, but they were mostly funny recollections of my Great Uncle Bug's many misadventures. The behavior expected of a Keith had been never codified for me until that moment. When my grandmother invoked family lineage and made clear that my behavior contradicted established norms, I was incredibly ashamed.

After her words hit me, a small aspect of my life turned on a dime. I decided that from then on I would make a point of sharing my food. It wasn't easy at first, and happened in stages. It started with me grudgingly giving bites when directly asked, to offering tastes of delicious meals, to my now taking great enjoyment in the preparation of food for others.

Breaking bread was sacred before the Atkins Diet deemed it a mortal sin. It's literally a life-giving act. From your reptile brain's perspective you are risking death by offering up the only food you may ever see again so that your companion may eat. In learning to share food, I learned more of what it is to be human.

I realize this is a behavior I should have mastered when I was five, and is nothing to be particularly proud of discovering so late in life. But it is evidence that people are capable of change, instantaneous significant change.

You can, right now, change a defining aspect of who you are. You can flip the switch from selfish to giving, from timid to confident, from careless to attentive. It simply takes the desire to change and an act of will to see it through.

Q: How many Psychologists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A: One. But the light bulb has to want to change.