A Piping Hot Bowl Of Soup

The start to this newsletter was, as always, something very simple: Rebecca sending me a draft of an article that was supposed to be about food but was really about survival. Which is, of course, the nature of everything we do and say and are in 2020: Everything is about one thing in the moment, but is really about survival in the long run. 

Sometimes when I think about stress - and well, I’ve been thinking about stress a lot lately for some reason - I think about professional athletes. I've spent a decent amount of time around professional athletes, and I think I have at least a small understanding of what stress looks like for them and what the cycle of intense physical training, recovery, travel, and competition really looks like. From the outside, it is a well-oiled machine, and it has to be. From the inside, there are just so many ways that a machine can malfunction. Bodies are not reliable narrators, and quite frankly, neither are minds. It takes a lot to be a high-performing human being, and more than that to be a part of a high-performing team, and more than that to be a high-performing league. And a high-performing society? Well, it's not like we've ever really seen an example of that.

It's within this context - and in thinking about what this past year has brought upon all of us - that I can't stop thinking about the time a professional athlete bubbled over on the inside. It was the second half of the season right before the focus shifts to the playoffs. In that time of year, expectations run high, energy is low, and the media goes after any story it can find. Imagine being in that time of year. (Imagine having high expectations and low energy and a never-ending series of headlines swirling around you? Pretty sure we can all do that.) Imagine being in that time of year and then just being pretty bad at your job for a week or so, and knowing that people are starting to talk about it. People are starting to talk about it - sure, in the media a little bit, but that doesn't bother you as much as knowing that your co-workers are probably talking about it too. And the people you look to for guidance? Well, maybe you feel like they're treating you worst of all by not helping you through the slump.

It might stand to reason that you might need some source of comfort, and for many reasons (including some Rebecca mentioned in last week’s email), that source of comfort very often is soup.  And that is why, on a March day in 2018 that I will personally never forget, Cleveland Cavaliers guard J.R. Smith's inner tension came to a head and he threw a bowl of soup at assistant coach Damon Jones.

The comforts of food aren't always of a nutritional nature.

I have thought about this incident probably once a week for most of 2020, because now more than ever it's both easy to understand what might drive a man to throw a bowl of soup and also because what was a major sports story in 2018 would probably last an hour in the current news cycle. I think, too, about what Jones said in an interview a year or so later about the incident. 

"It was the first bowl out of the pot, so it was hot as hell. It went everywhere...I mean, it was a mess."

I think about this mostly on Sunday afternoons, when I'm still tired because the weekend is never long enough and there's always something bad happening but I'm still standing at the stove trying to make myself something nutritious enough to make it through the week. The stovetop that got lovingly cleaned on Saturday morning is, by Sunday evening, often a splattered mess reflective of whatever pot or pan holds my attempts to feed myself. It takes a lot to hold it all together. But then I think about J.R. Smith launching that piping hot bowl of soup fresh from the pot into midair, and every single time I break into laughter. 

I mean, it was a mess.

You’re reading “Soup and Despair,” a weekly newsletter by Sarah Flynn and Rebecca Orchant. It’s about food, feelings, and surviving the dark times. If someone forwarded you this email, it’s because they love you and they want you to eat. You can subscribe to it too!