June 30, 2026
everybody should have this
personal essay
There is one thing I can do without thinking about it, and that is making pasta.
I am good at it. In my family, I am the one who makes it. When somebody is hungry, or sad, or it is raining and nobody can be bothered, they come to me and they ask for the pasta. I have been carrying that quietly for years now, and it means more to me than I usually let on.
The strange part is what happens in my head while I cook it, which is nothing. My head goes quiet. Somebody asks, or I just want it for myself, and my hands already know where to begin. I do not stand there wondering what goes in next, or whether I have forgotten something, or if it will turn out right this time. There is no list running behind my eyes. I just start. And somewhere between the garlic going soft in the oil and the smell filling the whole house, it turns into the thing it is supposed to be.
Do you know how rare that is? To do something and not doubt yourself, not even for a second.
I doubt almost everything else I do. I second-guess the smallest decisions until they exhaust me. But the pasta, I never question. The pasta, I am completely sure of, and that certainty has quietly become a kind of home.
There is a science underneath all of it. Salt, heat, fat, time. The way an onion gives up being sharp and turns sweet if you are patient with it. The way the sauce and the starchy water hold onto each other if you let them. I never learned any of that from a book. I learned it by getting it wrong enough times that my hands eventually stopped needing to be told. That is the strange gift of practising one thing for long enough. It leaves your head and quietly moves into your body, and one day it is simply a part of you.
There is a feeling in it too. Cooking for someone is love that a person can hold in their hands and actually eat. You put a plate in front of them and without saying a single word you are telling them, I thought about you, I wanted you to feel better, here. And when they go quiet for a moment because it tastes good, that small silence is the whole reason I bother.
And it is mine. The same ingredients, the same stove that anyone else has, and somehow it comes out tasting like me. My pasta has my hands inside it. Nobody can make it the exact way I make it, and I have started to believe that is the closest an ordinary day ever gets to art.
I think everybody should have one of these. Only one. One thing you can make without thinking, that belongs to you, that people come to you for. So many people move through their whole lives without ever finding theirs, sure of nothing, doubting every small move they make, when they could have had this one steady thing to hold onto on the days everything else feels uncertain.
Mine is pasta.
Soon I will be making it in a kitchen that is not this one, far away from my family, in a place where the evenings turn dark long before I am ready for them. And I keep returning to one thought, which is that at least I will have this. When everything around me is new, and I do not know where the shops are, and I am doubting all of it the way I always do, I will still know how to make the one thing. My hands will still remember, even when the rest of me forgets.
People always ask me how you are supposed to find yours, as if there is some trick to it. There is not really, but here is what I would tell you.
Notice what you already reach for. Your one thing is usually hiding in plain sight. It is whatever you make or do when you are tired and cannot be bothered to think, the thing your hands drift toward on their own.
Listen to what people ask you for. Other people often see your one thing before you do. Pay attention to what they come to you for, again and again, without thinking twice about it.
Pick something small and ordinary. It does not have to be impressive. It should fit inside a normal day. A dish, a fix, a way of calming someone down when they are upset. Small things are the ones you can actually repeat enough to get good at.
Then do it badly, over and over. This is the whole secret, and it is the part nobody likes. You make it wrong, and then a little less wrong, and one day you stop needing to think about it at all. That is the knowing leaving your head and moving into your hands.
Stay with one thing. You cannot find your one thing if you never let anything sit long enough. Make the same thing until the recipe falls away and it is simply yours.
You will know you have found it on the day you can do it without doubting, not even for a second. When that happens, keep it close.
So find your one thing. I really think everybody should have it.