“You attitude determines your altitude”
If I have to remember my father by a phrase this would be the one. He would constantly repeat it whenever a tough situation arose or when we were being unappreciative or complaining.
“You attitude determines your altitude”
And no, he was not talking about being superior than everyone else through your attitude but rather that any situation could be a good situation if you adjusted your attitude.
I recently came across a person that reminded me of just that. His name is Dario. He is a butcher.
I had seen the episode on Netflix about him. Small-town italian boy who inherits his father’s business. Same old story. But Dario’s story is different. Dario is different.
First, you need to understand who Dario is.
Dario is a middle-aged guy who does meat. He grows the cow, he cuts the meat, he cooks the steak. He is a yedi in the field. He was forced to take over the family butchery when his father died, abandoning his studies of veterinary. How can a person be happy with such a destiny? How can an aspiring veterinarian be so at peace with being a butcher? I’ll tell you how. He has cracked the code of life.
Dario understands the symbiosis of life. He grasps the concept of oneness that most people ignore. He knows that in this Earth we are one. To have a good steak we need a healthy cow, to have a healthy cow we need a veterinarian. It is all interconnected. And no life choice goes without impacting another.
Dario sees the act of eating meat as something sacred. He raises and cares for each specific cow. He then kills and butchers every single bone. And then he sells every single part of it, educating people on how to best respect the passed animal. Isn’t that beautiful?
You could ignore all the information about who Dario is and what he does and still be amazed at his presence. He carries himself with such a simple humility, that you could swear he floats. He is always smiling, always incorporating sense of humor and happiness to his everyday life. I only met him once, but I could swear he lives like this. He is light and kind and admirable.
The meat, that is a complete different story.
I promise you I had never in my life experienced flavors like I did while tasting Dario’s steaks. The smell was mouthwatering, from a distance you could feel acidic pinch at the end of the molars that comes from deep salivation. But the taste. Oh, boy. The taste was like anything I have ever even imagined. More than meat, it was like a perfect piece of umami butter melting on top of my tongue. The flavor was life-changing. This is not a hyperbole.
Before that evening I considered myself a flexible vegetarian. My diet consisted in a plant-based everyday menu with the occasional meat here and there whenever I went someplace new. As a chef, I want to experience everything. But after Dario, my philosophy towards meat shifted.
He reminded me that life really consisted on how we looked at it. It changes and shifts, depending on how we chose to approach it.
Life can be a tragedy: You might have wanted to be a veterinarian and life has conspired against you and made you a butcher.
Or life can be poetry: you can see the good in every situation and do the very best you can possibly do.
“Your attitude determines your altitude”
Dad always said that. And it has never made more sense than today.
I would like to believe that whatever life throws at me, I will be able to: receive, asses, adjust, rearrange and accept.
Always with deep gratitude and a happy heart.
