Category: Uncategorized

  • You Know Fall Is Coming When the Balloons Go Up

    You Know Fall Is Coming When the Balloons Go Up

    I grew up in the Midwest, where fall knew how to make an entrance.

    The trees announced it.

    Green gave way to yellow, orange, and red, as though the whole landscape had decided to burn beautifully before going quiet. Then the leaves began to fall, collecting along curbs and sidewalks, gathering beneath tires, crunching under your feet.

    You didn’t have to wonder whether the season was changing.

    All you had to do was look.

    New Mexico is different.

    Here, fall arrives a little more quietly.

    At first, it is something in the morning air.

    Not cold exactly.

    Just cooler.

    Enough that when you step outside early, you notice. Enough that you remember there will eventually come a morning when you will need a jacket.

    Then comes the smell.

    Green chile roasting.

    If you have lived here long enough, you know the smell before you see the roaster.

    Smoke and chile and flame carried through a grocery store parking lot. Those big metal drums turning over fire while people stand nearby, waiting for bags of roasted chile still warm enough to steam.

    And naturally, there are decisions to make.

    Where are you buying yours this year?

    Who has the best chile?

    More importantly:

    Who has the hot stuff?

    Not the chile somebody politely described as hot.

    The chile that makes you reconsider your confidence about halfway through dinner.

    These are serious questions.

    Or at least we treat them that way.

    And while you’re thinking about chile, while the morning is still cool and the smell of roasting peppers is floating through the air, you happen to look up.

    And there they are.

    The balloons are up.

    I have lived here for years.

    Long enough that none of this should surprise me anymore.

    But I still look.

    I still stop.

    I still reach for my phone.

    I still take pictures.

    There is something wonderfully impractical about a hot-air balloon.

    It doesn’t rush.

    It doesn’t seem particularly concerned about productivity.

    It just floats.

    A splash of color moving slowly across a blue New Mexico sky while the rest of us are down here trying to get somewhere on time.

    Maybe that’s part of why I still look.

    We spend so much of our lives training ourselves not to be impressed.

    We get used to things.

    The mountain becomes the mountain.

    The sunset becomes another sunset.

    The strange and beautiful thing we once stopped to admire becomes part of the scenery we pass without noticing.

    Familiarity can be a kind of blindness.

    I don’t want that.

    I don’t ever want to live somewhere so long that beauty becomes furniture.

    So I take another picture of a balloon.

    Even though I already have plenty.

    Probably too many.

    Maybe that’s all right.

    Growing up, autumn meant leaves.

    Here, it means something else.

    Cool mornings.

    Green chile.

    Balloons.

    Different signs for the same ancient turning.

    And maybe that is one of the quiet things a place teaches you when you stay long enough.

    You arrive with one definition of how the world is supposed to work.

    Then life gives you another.

    You learn that fall does not require red maple leaves.

    Home does not require the landscape where you were born.

    Tradition does not always have to be inherited.

    Sometimes you live somewhere long enough that new rituals begin attaching themselves to you.

    You don’t notice it happening.

    Until one morning you smell chile roasting and think:

    It’s that time again.

    Until you see the first balloons and instinctively reach for your phone.

    Until something that once belonged to somebody else’s place has quietly become part of your own calendar.

    Maybe belonging happens that way.

    Not with an announcement.

    Not with a ceremony.

    Just repetition.

    One season after another.

    One familiar smell.

    One cooler morning.

    One balloon drifting overhead.

    And a person standing beneath it who has seen this many times before—

    and still looks up.

    Kyle J. Hayes

    kylehayesblog.com

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  • Deep-Dish Grilled Onions & Mushroom Pizza 

    Deep-Dish Grilled Onions & Mushroom Pizza 

    There is something satisfying about making pizza from the beginning.

    Not opening a box.

    Not waiting for someone to knock on the door.

    Flour. Water. Yeast. A little patience.

    And perhaps patience is the ingredient we have become most reluctant to use.

    This dough spends the night in the refrigerator. Nothing dramatic happens. It simply rests while the yeast does its quiet work, turning a handful of ordinary ingredients into something that tastes as though considerably more effort went into it.

    The next day, onions and mushrooms go into a hot skillet. The onions soften and sweeten. The mushrooms lose their water and begin to brown. Shred a pound of mozzarella by hand.

    And yes, shred the cheese yourself.

    The bagged stuff is convenient, but convenience sometimes comes with a small tax on quality. Pre-shredded cheese is coated to keep the pieces separate, which also keeps them from melting quite as beautifully. For this pizza, buy the block.

    Then build the thing.

    No shortcuts necessary.

    10-Inch Overnight Deep-Dish Pizza

    Makes: One 10-inch deep-dish pizza

    Serves: 4 generously

    Dough fermentation: 12–24 hours

    Bake: approximately 25–30 minutes at 475°F / 246°C

    For the Seasoned Overnight Dough

    • 265 g bread flour
    • 158 g warm water, about 95–100°F / 35–38°C
    • 35 g extra-virgin olive oil
    • 6 g kosher salt
    • 2 g sugar
    • 1.5 g instant yeast
    • 1.5 g garlic powder
    • 1.5 g onion powder
    • 0.5 g dried oregano
    • 0.5 g dried basil
    • 0.5 g freshly ground black pepper

    Optional, but very good:

    • 3 g finely grated Parmesan
    • 0.5 g smoked paprika
    • 0.25 g dried thyme

    For the Pan

    • 14 g extra-virgin olive oil
    • 4 g cornmeal

    For the Pizza

    • 1 lb / 454 g low-moisture whole-milk mozzarella, freshly shredded from a block
    • 8 oz / 225 g fresh mushrooms, sliced
    • 1 medium red or yellow onion, about 170–200 g, sliced into approximately ¼-inch strips
    • 1 tablespoon / 14 g olive oil, for grilling the vegetables
    • ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
    • Freshly ground black pepper
    • 1¼ cups / about 300 g thick pizza sauce
    • 20–25 g freshly grated Parmesan or Pecorino Romano
    • ½ teaspoon dried oregano
    • Optional red-pepper flakes

    I like red onion here, especially with mushrooms. It retains a little character after cooking and gives the finished pizza some sweetness without disappearing into the sauce.

    The Night Before

    Put the flour, salt, sugar, yeast, garlic powder, onion powder, oregano, basil, and black pepper into a large bowl.

    If you’re using the Parmesan, smoked paprika, and thyme, add those too.

    Pour in the warm water and olive oil.

    Mix until the ingredients come together into a rough dough.

    Knead by hand for about 8 minutes, or about 5 minutes in a stand mixer.

    You’re not looking for perfection. You’re looking for a dough that has changed beneath your hands—smooth, elastic, soft, and just slightly tacky.

    Lightly oil a bowl and put the dough inside.

    Cover it and leave it on the counter for 30 minutes.

    Then put it in the refrigerator.

    Leave it there for 12–24 hours.

    Eighteen to twenty-four is even better.

    Time is doing some of the cooking before we’ve ever turned on the oven.

    The Next Day

    Take the dough from the refrigerator about 1½–2 hours before you want to make the pizza.

    Cold dough remembers where it has been. Give it time to loosen up.

    While it does, make the toppings.

    Grill the Onions and Mushrooms

    Heat a large skillet—cast iron is excellent here—over medium-high heat.

    Add the tablespoon of olive oil.

    Add the mushrooms first and spread them into a relatively even layer. Let them cook for 3–4 minutes before moving them much.

    Mushrooms contain a remarkable amount of water. We want that water in the skillet, not trapped beneath our cheese.

    Once they’ve begun releasing their moisture, add the sliced onion.

    Season lightly with salt and black pepper.

    Continue cooking for another 5–7 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the mushrooms have browned and the onions are tender with some caramelized edges.

    Don’t cook the onions all the way down into jam. They still have another half hour in a hot oven.

    Transfer everything to a plate and allow it to cool.

    This step matters.

    Raw mushrooms placed directly onto a deep-dish pizza can release enough water to make the center soggy. Cooking them first concentrates their flavor while protecting the crust.

    Shred the Cheese

    While the vegetables cool, shred the mozzarella.

    All of it.

    One pound.

    It sounds excessive until you remember what we’re making.

    This isn’t a thin pizza where cheese is scattered politely across the surface. Deep dish requires structure. That mozzarella forms a rich layer between the crust and everything wet that comes afterward.

    Use low-moisture whole-milk mozzarella, preferably sold as a block.

    Avoid fresh mozzarella packed in water for this particular pizza. It carries too much moisture.

    And skip the pre-shredded bag if you can.

    Freshly grated mozzarella melts into long, uninterrupted pools of cheese that remind you why pizza became beloved in the first place.

    Prepare the Pan

    Preheat the oven to 475°F / 246°C. Give it a good 30–45 minutes to heat through.

    Coat the bottom and sides of a 10-inch / 25-cm deep-dish pan with 14 g olive oil.

    Don’t be timid with it.

    That oil is partly responsible for the wonderful thing that happens to the bottom and edges of this crust. It doesn’t merely bake.

    It almost fries.

    Sprinkle the bottom with the cornmeal.

    Place the dough in the center and begin pressing outward with your fingertips.

    Work it across the bottom and approximately 1½ inches / 4 cm up the sides.

    If the dough keeps shrinking back, stop.

    Give it ten minutes.

    Then try again.

    Sometimes dough, like people, becomes considerably more cooperative when you stop fighting with it.

    Cover the pan and let the shaped dough rest for 45–60 minutes.

    Build the Pizza

    Deep dish asks us to forget some of what we know about pizza.

    The sauce does not go down first.

    Layer it like this:

    1. Freshly shredded mozzarella
    2. Grilled mushrooms and onions
    3. Pizza sauce
    4. Parmesan or Pecorino
    5. Oregano

    Spread most of the mozzarella directly over the dough, taking it nearly to the edges.

    Reserve roughly 75 g if you’d like some browned cheese visible on top, as in your pizza.

    Scatter the grilled mushrooms and onions evenly over the mozzarella.

    Spoon approximately 300 g pizza sauce over everything. Don’t mash it down. Spoon it across the surface and gently spread it.

    Finish with Parmesan or Pecorino, oregano, and the reserved mozzarella.

    A little crushed red pepper is welcome if that’s your way.

    Bake

    Place the pizza on the lower third of the oven.

    Bake at 475°F / 246°C for 25–30 minutes.

    Start watching carefully around 22 minutes.

    The cheese should be bubbling and beautifully browned in places. More importantly, the outer crust should be a deep golden brown.

    If the cheese is getting too dark before the crust is ready, loosely tent the top with aluminum foil.

    When it’s finished, take the pan from the oven and do something surprisingly difficult:

    Leave it alone.

    Give it 10–15 minutes before cutting.

    That rest lets the cheese, sauce, and vegetables settle. Cut immediately, and all that beautiful filling is much more likely to run onto the plate.

    Run a thin spatula around the edge, slice it into wedges, and serve.

    A Note From the Kitchen

    There are easier ways to make pizza.

    That’s worth admitting.

    You can buy dough. Buy shredded cheese. Open a jar. Throw raw vegetables over everything and have dinner on the table considerably sooner.

    And sometimes that is exactly what dinner needs to be.

    But this is something different.

    You make the dough tonight for something you won’t eat until tomorrow. You grate a pound of cheese. You stand over a skillet long enough for mushrooms to brown and onions to soften.

    None of these things is particularly difficult.

    They simply ask you to care.

    And maybe that’s one of the quiet pleasures of cooking at home.

    Every once in a while, we make something slowly, not because we have to, but because we can.

    Kyle J. Hayes

    kylehayesblog.com

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    Resources for Hard Times

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  • I Chose the Better Room

    I Chose the Better Room

    I chose the better room on purpose.

    That probably doesn’t sound like much of a decision.

    People choose hotel rooms every day. They look at the pictures, compare the prices, decide whether they want the larger bed or the better view, and click the button.

    But I sat there for a while before I clicked mine.

    Because somewhere inside me, an old voice was doing the math.

    Not the math of whether I could afford it.

    I could.

    A different kind of math.

    Do you really need that?

    I know that question well.

    I grew up with it.

    When you grow up without much, necessity becomes its own kind of morality. You learn there are things you need and things you want, and good people are supposed to know the difference.

    You don’t pay extra for the view.

    You don’t need the bigger room.

    A bed is a bed.

    A room is somewhere to sleep.

    Why spend money on something you can do without?

    There was wisdom in that.

    I don’t want to pretend otherwise.

    Those lessons came from people who understood what it meant to stretch a dollar until there wasn’t much stretch left. People who knew that money spent carelessly today might be money desperately needed tomorrow.

    They taught us how to survive scarcity.

    The problem is that nobody tells you what to do with those lessons when scarcity is no longer your everyday condition.

    Sometimes the circumstances change before the thinking does.

    So this time, I chose the better room.

    Not because I needed it.

    I chose it because I wanted to be comfortable.

    Even writing that feels a little strange.

    My brother arrived a day earlier than expected.

    He wanted me to meet his wife, and while he was still on the road, he called me. Somewhere in the conversation, we started talking about the hotel.

    My brother has done well for himself.

    Very well.

    At some point, he mentioned that he doesn’t usually stay in places like this.

    I didn’t think much about it at first.

    Then I did.

    Because I know where he came from.

    He came from where I came from.

    And I found myself wondering whether an old voice was still doing the math inside him, too.

    I can’t say if there is.

    His reasons belong to him.

    But I wondered.

    Two brothers, years removed from the circumstances of their childhood, both successful enough to make choices our younger selves couldn’t have made, perhaps still hearing echoes from a time when spending money on comfort would have seemed foolish.

    Maybe even irresponsible.

    It made me wonder how much of our past continues making decisions for us long after we believe we have left it behind.

    Scarcity teaches you things.

    Some of them are useful.

    You learn how to make do.

    You learn how to repair instead of replace.

    You learn that expensive and good are not synonyms.

    You learn not to confuse wanting something with needing it.

    Those are lessons I hope I never lose.

    But scarcity can teach other lessons too.

    It can teach you to feel guilty when you have more than enough.

    It can make comfort feel suspicious.

    It can convince you that choosing the cheaper thing is always evidence of wisdom, even when the difference no longer matters much to your life.

    And perhaps most quietly, it can teach you to ask whether you need something when that is no longer the only question available to you.

    I am not talking about living beyond your means.

    I am not talking about buying things to impress people who aren’t paying your bills.

    I am not talking about mistaking luxury for happiness.

    I have lived long enough to know better than that.

    I am talking about living comfortably within your means.

    There is a difference.

    And I am beginning to think that difference matters.

    Maybe there comes a point when the question changes.

    For much of my life, the question was:

    Do I really need this?

    That question served me well.

    But there are times now when I can ask something else.

    Can I afford it?

    Will it make this experience better?

    Am I making the choice responsibly?

    And if the answers are yes, maybe I don’t need to summon hardship as proof that I still remember where I came from.

    Maybe remembering is enough.

    That is the part I am still learning.

    Because there is something complicated about doing better than you once did.

    People talk about success as though it simply opens doors.

    They don’t talk as much about how long you can stand in the doorway wondering whether you are supposed to walk through.

    Some of us become very good at surviving.

    So good that survival follows us into rooms where it is no longer required.

    We carry it in the way we shop.

    The way we save.

    The things we refuse ourselves.

    The small calculations nobody else sees.

    And perhaps that isn’t entirely bad.

    I don’t want to lose the boy who understood that money mattered.

    I don’t want to become careless simply because I no longer have to count every dollar the way people around me once did.

    There is honor in remembering.

    But there should also be some room for living.

    So I am sitting in the better room.

    There is more space than I need.

    There are things here I could certainly do without.

    And tomorrow morning, when I wake up, none of it will have transformed my life.

    It is just a hotel room.

    I know that.

    But perhaps choosing it was never really about the room.

    Maybe it was about giving myself permission to enjoy something I could responsibly afford without immediately explaining why I didn’t need it.

    Maybe it was about understanding that the people who taught me how to survive would not necessarily want survival to be the ceiling of my life.

    I don’t know.

    I’m still thinking about that.

    But I know this:

    There is nothing wrong with remembering how to live with less.

    I just don’t want to become so faithful to scarcity that I forget I no longer have to.

    Kyle J. Hayes

    kylehayesblog.com

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  • The Foot and the Flower

    The Foot and the Flower

    This is a longer reflection than I usually share. I allowed it the space it needed because some wounds cannot be understood in a few sentences.

    For weeks now, I have been thinking about a flower.

    Not a particular kind. No rose or sunflower. 

    Just an ordinary flower trying to grow.

    Every morning, someone steps on it.

    Not hard enough to kill it. Just enough pressure to bend the stem. To bruise what has begun to open. To make the flower spend its strength recovering instead of growing.

    Then, after enough days have passed, the same person looks down and asks why it did not bloom properly.

    Why are you so small?

    Why do you lean that way?

    Why are your petals damaged?

    Why can’t you grow like the others?

    I have not been able to let that image go.

    Perhaps because I know what it feels like to be the flower.

    As a Black man, I have watched criticism presented as a form of love for most of my life. I have seen people embarrassed in front of others and told it was for their own good. I have heard jokes sharpened into weapons, then dismissed with the familiar accusation that the person wounded was too sensitive.

    We call it keeping someone humble.

    Keeping their head from getting too big.

    Making sure they don’t start thinking they are better than everyone else.

    Preparing them for the world.

    There is always a reason given for the foot.

    We are told that the world will not be gentle with us, so there is no point in being gentle with one another. We tell ourselves that ridicule builds a thick skin. That public embarrassment creates discipline. That if we cut someone down before the world gets the chance, perhaps they will be less surprised when it happens outside the safety of home.

    But I have begun to wonder what kind of safety requires us to imitate the danger.

    What kind of love practices the cruelty it claims to be preparing us to survive?

    The world has rarely needed our help hurting Black people.

    It has been remarkably capable on its own.

    I understand the value of correction. None of us should move through life surrounded by people too afraid to tell us when we are wrong. We need honesty. We need accountability. We need someone willing to say that we have fallen short, that our choices caused harm, or that the work we offered was not yet our best.

    But honesty does not require humiliation.

    Correction does not need an audience.

    Love does not have to leave a person smaller than it found them.

    Somewhere along the way, we began confusing humility with humiliation.

    Humility teaches us that we are not above anyone.

    Humiliation teaches us that we are beneath everyone.

    One keeps the ego from becoming a throne.

    The other convinces the spirit it does not deserve a chair.

    They are not the same.

    I have heard stories that some of this behavior may have roots in slavery. Stories of Black people hiding the intelligence, strength, skill, or beauty of someone they loved because being noticed by those who controlled their lives could be dangerous. An exceptional ability might attract attention. Attention could lead to exploitation, separation, or sale.

    I cannot say exactly how often it happened in that way.

    But I understand the fear beneath the story.

    There were times when being seen was dangerous for us.

    There were times when a person’s ability did not belong to them but became another thing someone else could profit from.

    Perhaps, under those conditions, love sometimes learned to hide itself.

    Perhaps protection sometimes sounded like criticism.

    Perhaps people made their children appear smaller because the world had made Black excellence unsafe.

    Survival can require strange disguises.

    But survival habits do not always disappear when the original danger changes.

    Sometimes they remain long after the people who first needed them are gone.

    A shield carried for generations can become too heavy to lift.

    A behavior created to protect the flower can eventually become the foot that keeps stepping on it.

    That is the question troubling me now.

    What are we protecting one another from today when we mock someone for being intelligent?

    What good are we creating when we ridicule a person for speaking differently, dressing differently, dreaming differently, or wanting more than the people around them were taught to expect?

    We excuse much of this by saying it is part of the culture.

    But culture is not an excuse.

    Culture is an inheritance.

    And like every inheritance, it must be examined.

    Much of what we carry is beautiful.

    But we have also carried wounds.

    Some have been passed down so carefully that we began mistaking them for traditions.

    Loving our culture does not require defending everything within it.

    Sometimes love means looking at what we inherited and asking whether it still serves us.

    Sometimes love means admitting that something once born from survival has become another source of pain.

    Not everything that survived deserves to lead us.

    I think of how often Black children are taught not to think too highly of themselves.

    There is wisdom in teaching a child that they are no better than anyone else.

    But there is danger in teaching them they are nothing special.

    The world will offer that lesson often enough.

    A child should not have to receive it first from home.

    How many young people have hidden their intelligence because achievement separated them from the group?

    How many have learned to pronounce words incorrectly so no one would accuse them of trying to sound white?

    How many sensitive boys learned to harden themselves because tenderness attracted ridicule?

    How many girls learned to dim their confidence so others would not call it arrogance?

    We tell ourselves we are keeping people grounded.

    Sometimes we are burying them.

    A particular expectation is placed on Black men.

    We are supposed to take it.

    The joke.

    The insult.

    The criticism.

    The public embarrassment.

    We are expected to remain still while someone cuts into us and then laugh to prove the blade was not sharp.

    If we admit that something hurt, we are called weak.

    If we object, we are told we cannot take a joke.

    So we learn to laugh.

    Sometimes we laugh before everyone else does.

    We make ourselves the joke so no one can accuse us of being unable to take one.

    We wound ourselves publicly and call it confidence.

    But laughter is not always evidence that something was harmless.

    Sometimes laughter is the sound a person makes while trying not to bleed in front of everyone.

    I have wondered how much of myself this shaped.

    How many times did I make myself smaller before entering a room?

    How often did I question my own thoughts because someone had taught me that confidence invited punishment?

    How often did I speak less clearly than I could have, not because I lacked the words, but because I did not want anyone to think I believed I belonged among those who used them?

    After being stepped on long enough, the foot no longer has to be present.

    You begin doing the work yourself.

    You criticize the idea before sharing it.

    You diminish the accomplishment before anyone can accuse you of pride.

    You reject the opportunity before someone else can tell you that you are not ready.

    You hide enthusiasm because joy makes you visible.

    You keep your expectations low and call it realism.

    That may be the cruelest part.

    The person who once harmed you can leave, but the voice remains.

    Then one day, you look at the life you have built and wonder why so much of it was shaped by fear of becoming visible.

    I do not believe the answer is empty praise.

    Flowers do not grow because we stand over them and tell them they are perfect.

    They need light, water, room, and care.

    Sometimes they need pruning.

    Care is not the absence of correction.

    Care is correction offered in service of growth.

    There is a difference between telling someone the truth and making them ashamed of being alive.

    There is a difference between preparing someone for difficulty and becoming one more source of it.

    There is a difference between helping someone grow and demanding that they prove they can survive being crushed.

    I wonder what would happen if we learned that difference.

    What might our communities look like if encouragement did not make us suspicious?

    What if we could watch someone rise without needing to remind them of every place they once fell?

    What if we understood that celebrating another person’s light does not dim our own?

    Perhaps more of us would reach adulthood without needing to rebuild the parts of ourselves that were dismantled at home.

    Perhaps excellence would feel less lonely.

    Perhaps a gifted child would not have to choose between belonging and becoming.

    Perhaps the young person who seems strange would be allowed enough time to discover that strangeness is a gift before the world has found a name for it.

    We often praise the person who grows through hardship.

    We admire the flower breaking through concrete.

    We photograph it.

    We turn it into a symbol of resilience.

    But we rarely ask why the flower had to fight concrete in the first place.

    Strength born from suffering is still strength.

    But suffering should not receive credit for everything a person became despite it.

    Pain may teach us.

    That does not mean pain was the only possible teacher.

    The flower that survived beneath the foot might have grown taller without it.

    It might have bloomed earlier.

    It might have spent less of its life healing from injuries others insisted were lessons.

    We may never know.

    That uncertainty carries its own sorrow.

    I cannot change every moment when I was cut down.

    I cannot recover every piece of myself I learned to hide.

    But I can decide what kind of person I will be when I stand near someone else who is beginning to grow.

    I do not want to be the foot.

    I do not want to wound them and then congratulate myself for making them stronger.

    I want to learn how to tell the truth with care.

    I want to recognize potential before it becomes achievement.

    I want to encourage people while they are still uncertain, not only after the world has permitted me to believe in them.

    I want to say:

    I see something in you.

    Keep going.

    You do not have to shrink to make me comfortable.

    Your gift does not threaten mine.

    That is how a culture changes.

    Not all at once.

    Not through speeches or declarations.

    Perhaps it begins with small acts of refusal.

    Refusing to laugh when the joke is meant to reduce someone.

    Refusing to mistake cruelty for honesty.

    Refusing to pass down a wound merely because it was handed to us.

    Perhaps it begins when we stop asking how much pressure a person can endure and start asking what they might become with the right care.

    A flower does not need to be stepped on to learn how to grow.

    It already knows to reach for the light.

    Our responsibility is not to test how much damage it can survive.

    It is to stop blocking the sun.

    Kyle J. Hayes

    kylehayesblog.com

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  • A Small Thank You

    A Small Thank You

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  • When Did We Stop Believing Each Other?

    When Did We Stop Believing Each Other?

    I don’t know exactly when we stopped believing each other.

    Maybe there wasn’t a moment.

    There rarely is.

    Things like trust don’t usually disappear all at once.

    They leave a little at a time.

    A promise not kept.

    A story that turned out not to be true.

    An institution that told us one thing while doing another.

    A person we trusted who taught us, painfully, that perhaps we shouldn’t have.

    Eventually, enough little fractures become a break.

    And lately, I have been wondering whether we are living inside that break.

    We don’t just disagree anymore.

    We suspect.

    We question motives before we consider words.

    Someone tells us something happened, and before we ask whether they are all right, somebody asks for proof.

    A photograph can be manipulated.

    A voice can be cloned.

    A video can be manufactured.

    A headline may have been written less to inform us than to make us angry enough to click it.

    Even our own eyes have become unreliable witnesses.

    So we approach one another with our hands already raised.

    Not necessarily to fight.

    Sometimes just to protect ourselves.

    I understand that instinct.

    Especially because some of us come from people who learned that trust could be dangerous.

    We Learned to Be Careful

    For Foundational Black Americans, distrust of institutions did not begin with social media.

    There is history behind our suspicion.

    Reconstruction came with promises that were abandoned.

    Black communities were redlined while being told opportunity was available to anyone willing to work for it.

    Black men with syphilis in Tuskegee were deceived by people they had every reason to believe were there to help them.

    The War on Drugs devastated communities while being presented as Protection.

    We learned something from all of that.

    Sometimes the people telling you to trust the system are protected from what happens when the system fails you.

    That lesson did not disappear simply because the calendar changed.

    It traveled.

    Grandparents taught parents.

    Parents taught children.

    Sometimes deliberately.

    Sometimes through nothing more than the way somebody’s voice changed when they said:

    Be careful.

    There was wisdom in that.

    There still is.

    But I have begun wondering about something else.

    What happens when Protection Becomes a Wall

    Distrust can protect you.

    It can also imprison you.

    That is the part we don’t talk about enough.

    If you have been betrayed, caution makes sense.

    If history has shown you that an institution is capable of harming people like you, skepticism isn’t paranoia.

    It can be memory doing its job.

    But there is a difference between asking someone to earn your trust and deciding nobody ever can.

    There is a difference between skepticism and allowing suspicion to become the lens through which you see the entire world.

    Because once you believe everyone is trying to fool you, eventually nobody can tell you anything.

    Not a journalist.

    Not a doctor.

    Not a teacher.

    Not a neighbor.

    Not your own family.

    Everybody has an angle.

    Everybody wants something.

    Everybody is lying.

    And the strange thing about living that way is that after a while it can begin to feel like wisdom.

    You can’t fool me.

    Perhaps not.

    But nobody can reach you either.

    A World Where Everything Can Be Fake

    Technology has made this more complicated.

    We carry machines in our pockets that can connect us to almost anyone on earth.

    And somehow many of us have never been more suspicious of the person on the other side of the screen.

    We scroll through arguments between strangers.

    We watch fifteen seconds of someone’s worst moment and decide we understand their character.

    We read a headline and decide we understand the story.

    We encounter information that confirms what we already believe and call it truth.

    Information that challenges us becomes propaganda.

    And now artificial intelligence has introduced something even more unsettling.

    We are entering a world where seeing may no longer be believing.

    A photograph can show something that never happened.

    A voice can say words its owner never spoke.

    A video can place someone somewhere they have never been.

    For most of our lives, proof meant something.

    We could argue about what something meant, but at least we could point to the photograph.

    Listen to the recording.

    Watch the video.

    Now even evidence can require evidence.

    We don’t yet fully understand what that will do to us.

    Because trust requires some shared agreement about reality.

    And when everything can potentially be fake, suspicion becomes almost reasonable.

    Almost.

    Somewhere behind all of this is another uncomfortable reality.

    Someone is making money.

    Anger keeps us watching.

    Fear keeps us scrolling.

    Suspicion keeps us engaged.

    A society constantly asking, Can you believe what they did? is very profitable.

    Trust is quieter.

    Trust doesn’t refresh every thirty seconds.

    Trust doesn’t generate nearly as much outrage.

    Trust is usually two people doing something remarkably uninteresting.

    Keeping their word.

    Showing up when they said they would.

    Telling the truth when lying would have been easier.

    Listening.

    Apologizing.

    Trying again.

    There isn’t much viral content in that.

    But there might be a civilization.

    When We Needed One Another

    I think about neighborhoods sometimes.

    Not because the past was perfect.

    It wasn’t.

    People lied then.

    People cheated.

    People stole.

    People disappointed one another.

    Human beings did not suddenly become flawed when Wi-Fi arrived.

    But needing one another required a certain amount of trust.

    Somebody watched the children.

    Somebody had a spare key.

    Somebody borrowed a cup of sugar.

    Somebody knew whose child belonged to whom.

    Someone noticed when the elderly woman down the street hadn’t opened her curtains that morning.

    You couldn’t build a community without taking some risk on other people.

    Maybe that is what trust has always been.

    Risk.

    We talk about trust as though it means certainty.

    It doesn’t.

    If I knew with absolute certainty that you would never hurt me, I wouldn’t need to trust you.

    Trust exists precisely because I don’t know.

    I am handing you something you could break.

    A confidence.

    A promise.

    My vulnerability.

    Sometimes my heart.

    And believing you will handle it carefully.

    That is terrifying when you’ve already had things broken.

    So I understand why people retreat.

    I understand the small circles.

    I understand the locked doors.

    I understand saying, I’m good by myself.

    There have been times in my own life when folding inward felt safer than reaching outward.

    But safety and living are not always the same thing.

    The Price We Pay

    There is a price for never trusting anyone.

    Eventually we stop showing up.

    Why help the neighbor if you think he’s taking advantage of you?

    Why believe someone’s pain if you assume everybody is exaggerating?

    Why join anything if you think everyone involved has an agenda?

    Why build community if community itself feels dangerous?

    Little by little, we become me.

    And perhaps that is one of the greatest costs of this age.

    Not simply that we don’t believe our institutions.

    But that we are slowly forgetting how to believe one another.

    I don’t think the answer is blind trust.

    Some people should not be trusted.

    Some institutions have earned scrutiny.

    Some doors should remain locked.

    But I don’t want betrayal to have the final say in what kind of person I become.

    I don’t want the people who proved themselves untrustworthy to teach me that nobody is worthy of trust.

    That gives them too much.

    The Quiet Work of Trust

    Maybe rebuilding trust begins much smaller than we imagine.

    Not with another platform promising to bring us together.

    Maybe it begins with keeping the promise you made yesterday.

    Calling when you said you would.

    Admitting when you don’t know something.

    Returning what you borrowed.

    Listening to somebody’s story before deciding whether you believe it.

    Being trustworthy yourself.

    People in my life have helped me through quiet battles without ever knowing they were doing it.

    They showed up.

    Again.

    And again.

    And again.

    Nothing dramatic.

    No speeches.

    Just consistency.

    Perhaps that is how trust returns.

    Not through declarations.

    Through repetition.

    One kept promise placed beside another until eventually somebody believes it is safe to put a little weight there.

    Then a little more.

    Until one day you realize something has been built between you.

    Something invisible.

    Something fragile.

    Something extraordinarily valuable.

    Trust.

    I don’t know whether we can restore trust in all the institutions that have lost it.

    Some of them have considerable work to do before they deserve it.

    We can decide what happens between us.

    We can remain cautious without becoming cold.

    We can remember history without letting it convince us that betrayal is inevitable.

    We can ask questions without assuming every answer is a lie.

    We can make people earn our trust without making the price impossible to pay.

    And perhaps most importantly, we can become people whose word still means something.

    Because the world may give us plenty of reasons to doubt one another.

    I don’t want to give it another.

    Maybe that is where rebuilding begins.

    Not by demanding that somebody trust me.

    By living in such a way that, eventually, they can.

    Kyle J. Hayes

    kylehayesblog.com

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  • The Rice Cooker Was Up There the Whole Time

    The Rice Cooker Was Up There the Whole Time

    I have written before about my air fryer and its role in my ongoing battle against kitchen heat.

    When it is hot outside, I have very little interest in making it hotter inside.

    There are meals worth suffering for.

    There are also days when I don’t particularly feel like suffering for dinner.

    The air fryer became one of my weapons in that fight. It lets me cook something good without turning on the oven and making the kitchen feel like somewhere I immediately regret being.

    But lately, I have recruited another appliance.

    My rice cooker.

    The funny thing is, it was already here.

    It had been sitting on top of my kitchen cabinets for who knows how long, quietly watching me complain about the heat while apparently knowing it could have helped the entire time.

    I just wasn’t really using it.

    I had always thought of a rice cooker as exactly what the name says it is.

    You put rice in.

    You put water in.

    You push a button.

    Rice comes out.

    Useful, certainly.

    Exciting, not particularly.

    Then the YouTube algorithm did what the YouTube algorithm does.

    You watch one video.

    Then another appears.

    Then another.

    Before long, I started seeing people making entire meals in rice cookers.

    Not just rice.

    Chicken.

    Vegetables.

    Seasonings.

    Sauces.

    Everything going into one pot and coming out as dinner.

    I looked up at the top of my cabinets.

    Apparently, I had been underestimating an employee.

    The Beauty of One Pot

    There is something deeply appealing to me about a meal that doesn’t require much ceremony.

    Maybe that comes from getting older.

    Maybe it comes from cooking enough meals to understand that good food doesn’t always need to announce how hard you worked to make it.

    Sometimes you want to chop a few things, put them into a pot, push a button, and go about your business.

    Especially when it is hot.

    And especially when you are meal prepping.

    That was the other thing that caught my attention.

    One cup of uncooked rice becomes roughly three cups once cooked. Add a chicken breast, some seasoning, and green onion, and suddenly I have about three portions of food without dirtying three pans or spending an hour standing over the stove.

    There is something satisfying about that kind of efficiency.

    Not the efficiency of eating something you don’t particularly want simply because it is convenient.

    The efficiency of making actual food convenient.

    I think there is a difference.

    I still want dinner to taste like somebody cared about it.

    Even when the somebody is me.

    Rice Cooker Chicken & Rice with Green Onion

    Makes approximately 3 servings

    This is deliberately simple.

    It isn’t supposed to be the kind of recipe that sends you searching three grocery stores for an ingredient you will use once and then discover in the back of the cabinet two years from now.

    Most of this is probably already somewhere in the kitchen.

    Ingredients

    • 1 cup uncooked white rice, rinsed
    • 1 boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into small bite-size pieces
    • 2 cups chicken broth or water (or the amount recommended on your rice package)
    • 1 tablespoon soy sauce
    • 1 teaspoon sesame oil
    • 1 teaspoon honey or brown sugar, optional
    • ½ teaspoon garlic powder
    • ¼ teaspoon onion powder
    • ½ teaspoon ground ginger, optional
    • Black pepper to taste
    • 2 green onions, thinly sliced
    • ½–1 cup frozen peas and carrots, optional

    Directions

    1. Prepare the green onions.

    Slice the green onions and separate the white and light-green portions from the darker green tops.

    Add the lighter portions to the rice cooker. Save those beautiful dark-green pieces for the end.

    2. Make the sauce.

    Pour the chicken broth into the rice cooker.

    Add the soy sauce, sesame oil, honey or brown sugar, garlic powder, onion powder, ginger, and a little black pepper.

    Give everything a quick stir.

    3. Add the rice.

    Add the rinsed rice to the liquid and gently stir it once so everything is evenly distributed.

    4. Add the chicken.

    Spread the uncooked chicken pieces evenly over the rice.

    Sprinkle the white and light-green portions of the green onions over everything.

    Close the lid.

    5. Push the button.

    Use your rice cooker’s normal white-rice setting.

    Then leave it alone.

    This may actually be the most difficult part of the recipe.

    There is a temptation when cooking to keep looking at things.

    To stir.

    To check.

    To interfere.

    Resist it.

    The machine knows what it is doing.

    6. Make sure the chicken is done.

    When the rice cooker finishes, check one of the largest pieces of chicken with a food thermometer.

    The chicken needs to reach an internal temperature of 165°F (74°C).

    If it hasn’t reached that temperature, continue cooking until it does.

    7. Finish with the green onions.

    Fluff the chicken and rice together.

    Stir in some of the dark-green onion tops and sprinkle the rest over each serving.

    If you are adding frozen peas and carrots, stir them into the piping-hot chicken and rice, close the lid again, and let everything sit for about five minutes, or until the vegetables are thoroughly heated.

    Taste.

    If it needs a little more soy sauce, add it now.

    Then eat.

    Or, if you are meal prepping like I am, divide everything into three containers.

    Tomorrow’s dinner has already been handled.

    Use What You Already Have

    I think there may be a small lesson hiding somewhere in all of this.

    We accumulate things with good intentions.

    Appliances.

    Books.

    Tools.

    Ideas.

    We tell ourselves we are going to use them.

    Then life happens.

    They sit there.

    And sometimes all it takes is seeing an old thing differently.

    My rice cooker hasn’t changed.

    I stopped seeing it as something that only makes rice and started seeing what else it could do for me.

    It gives me another way to cook without heating up the kitchen.

    It makes meal prep easier.

    It gives me three meals from one pot.

    There is less cleanup.

    Less standing over the stove.

    Less thinking about what I am going to eat tomorrow.

    And most importantly, it still allows me to eat something that feels like dinner.

    Something made at home.

    I think that matters.

    Because convenience has somehow become associated with not caring.

    Fast food.

    Frozen dinners.

    Something eaten standing over the sink because we don’t feel like making anything.

    But convenience doesn’t have to mean neglect.

    Sometimes convenience can be another form of care.

    It can mean making things a little easier for the person you’ll be tomorrow.

    The person who will open the refrigerator, tired and hungry, and discover that someone already thought about dinner.

    Even if that someone was you yesterday.

    Cook’s Note: Rice varieties and rice cookers can behave differently. The rice I used calls for 2 cups of liquid for every 1 cup of uncooked rice. I initially tried less and ended up with rice that was undercooked and burned in places. Check the directions on your rice package and adjust the liquid if necessary.

    Kyle J. Hayes

    kylehayesblog.com

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  • Are We Waking Up?

    Are We Waking Up?

    I heard someone say recently that alcohol makes you stupid.

    That was it.

    Nothing profound.

    It was said almost casually, a quick explanation for the behavior of some people sitting around drinking. The kind of sentence you hear, maybe laugh at, and forget before the conversation moves on.

    Except I didn’t forget it.

    It followed me.

    Because the more I thought about it, the less ridiculous it sounded.

    Alcohol does not actually make a person stupid. Intelligence doesn’t disappear into the bottom of a glass.

    But alcohol does remove things.

    Judgment.

    Restraint.

    Inhibition.

    Patience.

    Sometimes fear.

    Sometimes shame.

    Sometimes that little voice inside us that says:

    Maybe don’t do that.

    We even have language for what happens afterward.

    “He wasn’t himself.”

    “She had too much to drink.”

    “I don’t remember what happened.”

    “I would never have done that sober.”

    We say these things because somewhere inside them is an understanding that alcohol can interfere with some of the machinery we use to govern ourselves.

    And I started wondering about that.

    Not just about drinking.

    About anesthesia.

    About what happens when numbness becomes ordinary.

    Because there is another side to alcohol that doesn’t get talked about nearly as much.

    Sometimes people aren’t drinking because they want to become wild.

    Sometimes they are drinking because they are tired.

    Sometimes they want the world to become quiet for a few hours.

    The bills are still sitting on the table.

    The marriage is still failing.

    The job still hurts.

    The loneliness will still be waiting tomorrow morning.

    The grief hasn’t gone anywhere.

    But for a little while, something poured into a glass can soften the edges.

    I understand that.

    I think most of us can understand wanting relief.

    Some days, being fully awake to your own life can feel like work.

    And that is where my thoughts became uncomfortable.

    Because alcohol has never existed outside history.

    European colonists brought large quantities of distilled alcohol into Native communities and made it part of trade. Historical research describes traders discovering that alcohol could give them an advantage in negotiations. It became tangled with commerce, diplomacy, land, exploitation, and the larger machinery of colonization.

    And then something familiar happened.

    The people living with the consequences eventually became the stereotype.

    The story became about the “drunken Indian” instead of everything that had happened around the drinking.

    That distinction matters.

    Because sometimes we look at people coping with devastation and blame them for the way they learned to survive it.

    Black America knows something about that too.

    Walk through enough poor Black neighborhoods, and you begin noticing what is available.

    Liquor stores.

    Convenience stores.

    Fast food.

    Cheap calories.

    Cheap intoxication.

    And sometimes precious little of what actually nourishes a human being.

    People have been saying for years that in some neighborhoods it can feel easier to find a cold beer than fresh fruit and vegetables.

    Think about what that means.

    Not as a conspiracy.

    Not as an excuse.

    Just as geography.

    What a neighborhood makes easy tells you something.

    So does what it makes difficult.

    And alcohol is remarkably easy.

    There are bottles for celebration.

    Bottles for heartbreak.

    Bottles after work.

    Bottles at the cookout.

    Bottles at the funeral.

    A drink because we won.

    A drink because we lost.

    A drink because somebody was born.

    A drink because somebody died.

    A drink because it is Friday.

    Sometimes we don’t even ask what we are trying to escape.

    That question may be too expensive.

    So we order another round.

    But lately I have been noticing something else.

    People seem to be drinking less.

    I thought perhaps it was only something I was seeing until I came across a USA Today article about Gen Z and Millennials changing their relationship with alcohol.

    The research behind the article came from the Bank of America Institute. It found alcohol spending as a share of household budgets hovering near a forty-year low. Even more interesting to me, government data examined in the report showed that there were nearly 3.9 million fewer binge drinkers between the ages of 21 and 34 in 2024 than there had been a decade earlier.

    The researchers described some of the change as moving from “barstools to barbells.”

    Young people working out more.

    Drinking less.

    Finding different ways to socialize.

    And it isn’t only young people.

    Gallup reported in 2025 that 54 percent of American adults said they drank alcohol, the lowest level in nearly ninety years of its polling.

    Something is changing.

    What I don’t know is what that something means.

    Because at roughly the same time, I find myself watching people questioning more things.

    Organizing.

    Reading.

    Marching.

    Building.

    Arguing.

    Documenting.

    Demanding receipts.

    Asking who owns what.

    Asking who benefited.

    Asking why their neighborhoods look the way they do.

    Asking why their parents accepted certain things.

    Asking why their grandparents had to.

    Maybe the two have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

    But I sometimes wonder.

    What if we are watching people decide they would rather feel everything than continue feeling nothing?

    What if we are tired of being numb?

    Something is frightening about sobriety when you think about the word beyond alcohol.

    To become sober is to see clearly.

    And seeing clearly carries responsibility.

    Once you see the crack in the wall, you cannot pretend the wall is whole.

    Once you understand how something happened, ignorance becomes harder to retreat into.

    Once you recognize injustice, you have to decide what your knowledge requires of you.

    That is the difficult part.

    Awareness doesn’t always feel good.

    Sometimes awareness makes you angry.

    Sometimes it makes you ashamed.

    And sometimes you discover that something you believed your entire life wasn’t true.

    Maybe that is why every society has invented ways of escaping itself.

    Alcohol.

    Drugs.

    Food.

    Television.

    Shopping.

    Work.

    Phones.

    Endless scrolling.

    Different bottles.

    Same promise.

    You don’t have to think about it right now.

    And perhaps that is the question that has been bothering me since I heard that crude little sentence.

    Not whether alcohol makes us stupid.

    That is too easy.

    The better question is what happens when enough people decide they no longer want to be anesthetized.

    What happens when people want their judgment back?

    Their memory back?

    Their anger back?

    Their attention back?

    What happens when somebody who has spent years trying not to feel finally decides that feeling is necessary?

    Maybe nothing.

    Maybe declining alcohol consumption and what I perceive as growing social awareness are two completely separate things that happen to occupy the same moment.

    I am willing to accept that.

    But I still find myself wondering.

    Because power has rarely had much to fear from people who are asleep.

    Awake people ask questions.

    Awake people remember.

    Awake people notice who is missing from the photograph.

    Who wrote the history.

    Who owns the building.

    Who gets paid.

    Who gets arrested.

    Who gets forgiven.

    Who gets forgotten.

    Awake people can become inconvenient.

    And maybe something beautiful is happening beneath all of this.

    Not purity.

    Not prohibition.

    Not some judgment of the person sitting at the end of the bar trying to survive a Wednesday.

    I have no interest in condemning them.

    Life can hurt.

    Sometimes terribly.

    And human beings have always searched for ways to make the hurting quieter.

    I understand that.

    But there is a difference between understanding why we seek numbness and pretending numbness doesn’t cost us anything.

    Maybe the question isn’t whether drinking is good or bad.

    Maybe the question is simpler.

    What are we trying not to feel?

    And what might happen if, for once, we allowed ourselves to feel it?

    The grief.

    The anger.

    The history.

    The dissatisfaction.

    The possibility.

    Maybe we would discover that some of what we have been trying to numb was never weakness at all.

    Maybe some of it was information.

    Something inside us saying:

    This hurts.

    This isn’t right.

    This needs to change.

    There are worse things than being uncomfortable.

    Sometimes discomfort is how the body tells us to move our hand away from the flame.

    Sometimes anger is how the soul tells us something precious has been violated.

    And sometimes clarity begins with the decision to stop looking away.

    I don’t know if we are becoming a more sober people.

    But I wonder if we are becoming a more awake one.

    And if we are—

    I hope we stay awake.

    Kyle J. Hayes

    kylehayesblog.com

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  • How Do You Deal With Uncertainty?

    How Do You Deal With Uncertainty?

    I try to make sure I am doing the right thing.

    That may sound too simple for a question about uncertainty. We tend to think uncertainty requires some complicated philosophy. A system. A way of seeing around corners and knowing what waits for us before we get there.

    I don’t have one.

    Most of the time, I cannot know what is going to happen. I cannot know how someone will respond to a decision I make. I cannot know whether a choice will work out the way I hope. Age has not given me the ability to predict the future.

    But it has made me more interested in something else.

    Being able to live with myself afterward.

    So when I am uncertain, I try to ask a simpler question:

    Am I doing the right thing?

    Not the easiest thing.

    Not the thing that benefits me the most.

    Not even the thing I particularly want to do.

    The right thing.

    I think most of us know the difference more often than we pretend we do.

    That is where uncertainty can become complicated.

    Sometimes what we call uncertainty isn’t really uncertainty at all. Sometimes we know exactly what the right thing is.

    We just don’t want to do it.

    If doing the right thing was easy, everyone would do it.

    Because doing the right thing can cost you something.

    It can mean admitting you were wrong when your pride would rather defend you.

    It can mean telling the truth when a lie would make life easier.

    It can mean keeping your word when breaking it would be more convenient.

    It can mean walking away from something you desperately want because you know having it would require becoming someone you don’t want to be.

    There are moments when the wrong thing comes dressed in very reasonable clothing.

    It whispers that nobody will know.

    That everyone does it.

    That you deserve this one exception.

    That you’ve already sacrificed enough.

    And perhaps that is where character lives—not in the moments when right and wrong are obvious and doing right costs us nothing, but in those quiet places where we could choose differently and probably get away with it.

    I have learned that doing the right thing does not guarantee a good outcome.

    That is important.

    You can be honest and still lose.

    You can be kind and still be misunderstood.

    You can make the responsible decision and still wonder afterward whether you made a mistake.

    Doing right is not some bargain we make with the universe where good behavior guarantees good results.

    Life doesn’t work that way.

    Sometimes you do the right thing, and it hurts.

    Sometimes nobody thanks you.

    Sometimes nobody even knows.

    But there is a particular kind of peace in knowing that when the moment came, you did what you believed was right.

    Maybe that is how I deal with uncertainty.

    I don’t try to eliminate it.

    I couldn’t if I wanted to.

    I simply try to make certain of the part that belongs to me.

    My choices.

    My intentions.

    My willingness to do what I know is right, even when I would rather do something else.

    The rest belongs to tomorrow.

    And tomorrow has never asked my permission before arriving.

    So I try to meet it with a clear conscience.

    For me, that is enough.

    Kyle J. Hayes

    kylehayesblog.com

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  • Maybe a Good Life Is Smaller Than We Think

    Maybe a Good Life Is Smaller Than We Think

    I grew up poor enough to know what government cheese tasted like.

    Powdered milk too.

    Those were not stories we told about hardship. They were groceries.

    They were what helped get a family from one part of the month to the other.

    When you grow up like that, the good life can take on a particular shape in your imagination.

    It gets bigger than necessary.

    A giant house.

    Luxury cars.

    Vacations in places you have never seen.

    A refrigerator full of food, so nobody has to worry about running out.

    Bills paid before they are due.

    Maybe even the kind of life we used to see on television.

    When the electricity was on.

    The houses looked enormous.

    The kitchens looked spotless.

    Nobody seemed to worry about the light bill.

    Nobody opened a refrigerator and stood there doing arithmetic.

    Nobody looked at the last few slices of bread and wondered how many people still needed to eat.

    On television, there always seemed to be enough.

    More than enough.

    As a child, I thought that was the good life.

    Maybe that made sense.

    When you don’t have much, abundance looks a lot like happiness.

    You imagine that if you can just get far enough away from what you knew, everything will finally feel safe.

    A bigger house will do it.

    A nicer car.

    More money.

    A vacation where nobody has to count every dollar before ordering dinner.

    I don’t judge the younger version of myself for wanting those things.

    He was trying to imagine security with the only language he had been given.

    Money.

    Space.

    Possessions.

    Distance.

    The farther you could get from government cheese and powdered milk, the better you must be doing.

    But getting older has a way of changing definitions.

    Sometimes you simply wake up one day and realize you are no longer chasing the things you once thought would prove you had made it.

    I don’t live in a giant house.

    I live in a nice apartment.

    And I like it.

    I have an SUV that I love, and unless somebody takes the keys away from me one day, I plan to keep it forever.

    It gets me where I need to go.

    It is comfortable.

    It is mine.

    I have a small group of close friends.

    Not a crowd.

    Not a room full of people.

    Just a few of the best friends I have ever known.

    People I trust.

    People I can laugh with.

    People who know enough about me to understand when I am talking and when I am avoiding what I really mean.

    There was a time when I might have looked at this life and thought it was smaller than what I wanted.

    Now I wonder if I was measuring with the wrong ruler.

    Maybe the good life is smaller than we think.

    Not smaller in value.

    Smaller in scale.

    Maybe it does not require a mansion.

    Maybe it requires a place where you feel at peace when you close the door.

    Maybe it doesn’t require a luxury car.

    Maybe it requires something reliable that takes you home.

    Maybe it does not require being surrounded by people.

    Maybe it requires a few who would notice if you disappeared.

    Maybe it does not require eating in expensive restaurants.

    Maybe sometimes it is knowing there is enough food in the refrigerator and not having to worry about what will be left next week.

    There are things you notice differently when you grew up without enough.

    A full pantry can feel like wealth.

    A paid electric bill can feel like wealth.

    Being able to turn on the air conditioning without fear can feel like wealth.

    Buying something at the grocery store because you want it, instead of because it is the cheapest option, can feel like wealth.

    Going home to a place you actually enjoy living can feel like wealth.

    Having someone call and ask how you are, and knowing they really want the answer, can feel like wealth.

    None of these things photograph especially well.

    That may be part of the problem.

    We live in a world that is very good at showing us what success is supposed to look like.

    But somewhere along the way, we can begin confusing a life that looks impressive with a life that feels good to live.

    Those are not always the same thing.

    You can own a large house and dread going home.

    You can sit in an expensive car and feel completely alone.

    You can stand on a beach halfway around the world and still carry every worry you packed with you.

    Money can solve many problems.

    I would never pretend otherwise.

    People who have lived without enough usually understand that better than anybody.

    Enough matters.

    Maybe more than excess.

    There is a particular peace in enough.

    Enough food.

    Enough money to breathe.

    Enough space.

    Enough people who love you.

    Enough time to sit still for a while.

    Enough confidence in yourself that you no longer need everything you own to explain your worth to somebody else.

    That kind of enough does not make much noise.

    It doesn’t need to.

    Kyle J. Hayes

    kylehayesblog.com

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    Resources for Hard Times

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