To Slurp Or Not To Slurp

Dear Community, 

I wrote this piece several years ago and I always loved it, but for some reason, I never published it.

It feels especially relevant now.

We judge one another, we rank people, we take our own customs, beliefs, and ways of seeing the world and mistake them for universal truth. Then we create stories about those who live differently—and forget that they are stories.

I feel that this is the way distance becomes hierarchy, hierarchy becomes contempt, and contempt eventually makes cruelty feel justified.

Perhaps heaven on earth does not begin with everyone agreeing, but maybe, it begins when we become a little less certain that our way of being human is the only right one.

Here we go. Enjoy!

TO SLURP OR NOT TO SLURP

Growing up, slurping soup was not merely impolite. It was evidence of a defective character.

People who made noises while eating were primitive, uneducated, ill-mannered—possibly beyond redemption.

My mother monitored the sounds at our dinner table with the conscientiousness of someone performing a highly paid and medically necessary service.

One slurp, and she was there.

You brought the spoon to your mouth in a less than optimal way? Correction.

You drank something audibly? Immediate intervention.

You were reminded that civilized people did not make such noises, and that we—whatever else might be wrong with us—were civilized people.

By the time I was thirty-four, I had mastered the art of consuming soup in complete silence. I had also mastered the art of harshly judging anyone who had not received the same excellent training.

Then I met my husband.

I fell madly in love with him. He was brilliant, thoughtful, loving, funny, handsome, generous, and frugal (which I loved, at the time!). He put care into everything he did. He had every quality I had imagined wanting in a husband.

There was only one problem.

HE SLURPED HIS SOUP.

I could not believe this was happening to me.

The man had gone to Ivy League schools, but apparently no one had taught him how to bring liquid into his body without creating a soundscape.

Every time he slurped, something inside me contracted. I felt suffocated. Almost panicked.

The voices in my head began holding an emergency meeting:

He is rude.

He has no self-awareness.

What else does this mean?

Maybe he isn’t who he says he is.

Perhaps all that education has been wasted.

This is how inherited conditioning works. It does not announce itself as conditioning, it arrives dressed as truth.

I wasn’t thinking, My mother taught me a particular Romanian rule about soup, and now my nervous system is reacting to its violation.

I was thinking, I am right, and this man is a barbarian.

I loved him, but I couldn’t live like this. My psyche could not contain both “wonderful man” and “person who slurps.” One of these realities had to go.

So I summoned my courage and confronted him.

At the time, this felt like one of the bravest things I had ever done—right up there with immigrating and building an entirely new life in another country.

I told my husband that his slurping was unbearable.

And then something unexpected happened.

We had one of the most interesting conversations of our early relationship.

He explained that in his culture, soup is served extremely hot. Slurping cools it as it enters the mouth. It is not evidence of poor manners. It is the appropriate way to eat soup. In fact, refusing to slurp could be considered strange—or even rude.

The sound that meant “uncivilized” to my mother meant something entirely different to his family.

My absolute truth was suddenly revealed to be a local custom.

Nothing had changed about the sound. What changed was the story I had attached to it.

And underneath my impeccable manners, I found something less flattering: contempt. I had mistaken familiarity for correctness and obedience for refinement. I had inherited a rule and then used it to rank human beings.

That conversation did much more than settle a disagreement about soup. It expanded my reality. It made me trust him more. It also made me a little less certain that every voice in my head—no matter how Romanian, authoritative, or impeccably mannered—was telling the truth.

Almost twenty years later, guess who slurps her soup?

I do.

Loudly enough, perhaps, for my mother to hear me all the way from Romania.

With love, (a tiny sprinkle of) rage, and reverence,Your disorganized, recovering people-pleaser, community-dreamer, hope-filled activist in the making, deep-sleeper, clean compliment giver and receiver, not-a-true-exhibitionist, 21-day resetter, recovering prostitute, courageous by practice, trusting by skill, always with my head in the clouds, but loving my feet on the ground, soul worker (!), inner voice listener, pleasure list maker, Aquarium sleepover organizer, beginner-level meditator, wabi-sabi contemplator, self-fascinated observer, giving-up-machismo supporter, hot soup-slurper,

Corina