I recently made a discovery. A discovery about an everyday edible item but one I never paid much attention to. But something about it made me pause with a knife in mid-air and wondered why I never realized its beauty before.
When I was growing up in Australia in the late 80s, it was fairly hard to get the variety of vegetables of the Chinese kind. Kang-kung (watercress), Dou-miao (pea sprouts) or Fanshu-miu (sweet potato leaves) were practically unknown. There was, however, one stout-like leafy vegetable which you could get in abundance and that was Bok-choy. Interestingly, whether it was the local grocery stores like Coles and Safeway or the Asian super-marts, Bok-choy was simply labelled as "Bok-choy" with no English translation required. I remember this because I got bored of eating Bok-choy fairly quickly. As a vegetable, it didn't feature much in my cooking once I learned how to do a simple stir-fry and eventually, it hardly made any appearance at all.
Over the years, I have cooked Bok-choy when I couldn't find or think of other vegetables to accompany a meal. It was never a choice vegetable in a weekly shopping list but rather something I grabbed as a last minute thing because I couldn't find anything better.
So imagine my surprise when I chopped off the end of a Bok-choy stalk recently and literally stopped with a knife in mid-air. You know…the end bit…that you would just simply slice your knife through and bin it. The end bit that serves no other purpose except to hold the leaves together. The end bit that is nondescript, so mundane that you have no use for it. Until you turn it on the stem and look right into the heart of a Bok-choy and stare at its core.
It is beautiful. Stunning in its simplicity. It reminded me so much of the petals of a delicate rose. But unlike a rose which is associated with love and care, the heart of a Bok-choy has never had its moment on a pedestal. It is an everyday edible food that feeds you, nourishes you and is quickly forgotten.
A lot of us may feel like the end bit of a Bok-choy. Ok, perhaps you've never heard it described quite like this before but it's true. You've never been taken seriously because of how you look; you've never been treated properly because of how you look; you've never been given that ONE chance simply because of how you look. The outside, the exterior, the skin that covers our bodies - the eyes see first and trigger our mind to judge. I am guilty of this and I know many of you are too. But the inside, the core, the heart - the eyes cannot see, not unless you peel off the layers and make the effort to want to know, to want to care and not to judge on that very first impression.
I am not saying that you should place little or no care in how you appear to others. Personal hygiene and a neat appearance are both important. What I am saying is despite your best effort in how you present yourself to the public, people take one look and simply walk away without a care.
As I slowly lowered my hand and placed the knife next to the end bit of the Bok-choy, I am reminded that the human heart is a complicated organ. Cuts and bruises disappear over time but the scars contained within the heart stay for life. I know I have such a long way to go to make that difference and for each person I have offended, I pray that I have equally cared for another. For the hurt I have caused, I hope I have loved just as much. And for each incorrect judgement I have made, I can only ask for forgiveness. It's not about balancing a wrong with a right; it is about an ability to reflect, improve our actions and thoughts so that each person starts on equal footing.
Because no matter what you have been blessed with on the outside, you are so much more on the inside. The heart is why you live, it is what makes you feel. When it stops beating, nothing else will matter.
It took an action of slicing off the end bit of a Bok-choy to remind me just how important the core is…how beautiful a heart is and should be.
