The Potato Parable: How one shriveled vegetable reminded me of some important lessons.

I have become quite the Betty Crocker—the gluten-free, vegetarian version—since I changed my diet 16 years ago because of multiple food allergies. Gradually at first, now I make everything I eat. Nothing fancy, but what I make is, for my taste, the best can’t-find-it-anywhere fare around.

Potatoes have become a daily part of my culinary repertoire. Sweet and regular, home fried, hashed, baked and mashed, organic when available. I keep a big ceramic bowl loaded with them. On this day I plucked a sweet potato bought a few weeks earlier. It had been hidden by newer purchases, and was looking bad, its dried-out skin all blotchy and wrinkled, I looked at it, shook my head, asked for forgiveness, and tossed it in the trash. Then I reached for a regular potato to make home fries (my home fries are more like butchered cubes and slivers of cubes; I just go hari-kari on the potato until it looks uniformly un-uniform). But the spud was too small and there was not enough.

I began to think about the sweet potato I had trashed. Maybe there was some part of it I could use, for it just looked bad, it wasn’t rotten or mushy. So I fished it out, took a peeler to it, scraping hard against the ridged skin, and lo and behold, the orangy-flesh underneath looked okay. I chopped half of it and added it to the regular potatoes. I then poured some olive oil in the pan, added some chopped onion, and after a few minutes added the potatoes with twists of pepper and Himalayan salt. The key to cooking potatoes to an eventual crispness is to leave them on that first go round for a good 8-10 minutes before stirring. 20 minutes later I had a new masterpiece. A masterpiece! The mélange of sweets and russets made magic together.

And then I thought, how close this potato came to waste through no fault of its own. How unfair! Relegated by the world (me) to a hopeless fate of futility, its life on earth amounting to nothing but a few shekels for those who traded in it, but its true destiny—bringing nourishment and pleasure to its fellow earthly traveler—forever lost. A potato’s soul sacrificed by the all-too-common human folly of being falsely judged by its cover.

This realization reminded me of people. I mused about how society gives up on people whose outward appearance screams worthlessness. We give in to our prejudices and make completely erroneous views of their true value, their true potential, and their true equal claim to the fulfillment of their destiny due all humans by their Creator.

Every person is a son or daughter of a mother, and a child of God. Sometimes we need to dig deeper to uncover one’s true value. Who knows what genes they were born with, what upbringing, or lack thereof, they have suffered, what traumas they have faced, or still face? We’ve just gotta give more people more chances to flower. The world awaits the hidden treasure freed by their fruition.

But there is also another reason I nearly threw this potato away—my lack of appreciation. I have so much, and I live in a land of plenty, even excess. It was nothing to toss what turned out to be a perfectly good source of sustenance and pure gastronomic joy. But to those who starve, who have nothing, or who live in a land where empty shelves and pockets are the norm, this shriveled potato would have been savored, never so carelessly rejected.

Salvation seems as easy as 1-2-3: 1) Honor the truth, revere reality, reject preconceptions; 2) Cultivate gratitude, appreciation, and humility; and 3) Will, if not feel, true love and DO GOOD for the other. Love all and “wok” humbly with the shriveled spuds of life.

Take a sad song and make it better!

Richard Dawahare is a Lexington attorney.

This story was originally published April 9, 2021 at 10:43 AM.