When you’re a child, all you ever want is something seemingly distant and out of reach. You want what is beneath the crust: the sweet embrace of Santa’s rampant consumerism; hitting the big double-digits in age; to finish school; to become an adult, and live an apparently glitzy self-governed world past 18 – fermenting thoughts we can all remember having at some point.

Sure enough, the ‘stresses’ of being spoilt as a child do eventually give way to a form of new-found freedom, but the caveats are well hidden throughout a sliced rye held closely to the chests of our ‘wiser’ elders. Important lessons such as ‘no one gives a shit’, and the key realisation the term ‘arsehole’ is infact a gender-neutral one, are important experiences better realised sooner rather than later. You cannot be forewarned about them; it’s best to chew through them at your own pace.

As you get old enough to crack the cobb, life’s outer-crust begins revealing the goo inside, and it starts being up to you to determine the mix of debt and taxes within.

No matter how you slice it, the truth is our parents, like many a generation before them, had and have no fucking idea about life, just as I had and have no fucking idea to this day. We all just gradually grow moldier.

What I’ve found most interesting about freedom is the willingness of the aforementioned free-range humans to submit themselves to some straight-up bullshit on a day to day basis, in the face of alternative options. Fraught relationships, fraught employment, fraught purchases – there’s an obvious safety in the familiar, and a great fear of the unknown.

While it is true you can scrape out the mouldy innards of your existence and replace them with a mystical new blend of spinach, cream and cheese, too many of us choose to sail through by the grace of someone else’s trial and error instead. As your loaf in life decays like a crucial government investment, breaking mouldy bread repeatedly is at your own peril – so why not part the seas of mediocrity and try something new?

Sure, you can keep indulging in New Idea-esk trends like going gluten-free unnecessarily in the face of a millennia of human dietary evolution, or you can ask for more. You’re free to cast away the shackles of $1 Coles white bread or those seedy whole grains, and say ‘oui’ to the French. Toss the ciabatta and replace it with a crepe. Break the bagel loop of life and make it a brioche bun – high in fat with questionable nutritional value.

You are (apparently) in control.

Your ambitions need not be lofty. For example, all I seek is the ability to squander my house deposit on something other than a avocado-smothered piece of sourdough at my local cafe. The grain of the matter is, sourdough is a terrible, awkward, chewy disaster reminiscent of Star Wars: The Last Jedi that could be replaced with something equally decrepit nutritionally, but substantially more edible (like The Force Awakens).

I have at least learnt that life should be rich, soft, and edible. I’d throw my dough on it.

#sourcott