Have you gotten rested up with the completion of the holiday season? Have all your decorations and gifts been put away?Don't get too ready to put a season of festivity behind you just yet because it is now time to celebratedrum roll, pleaseNational Popcorn Day! Okay technically this is an American designation but I am more than happy to join with our neighbors to the south on January 19 for this special day.
I don't know who the popcorn growers had to lobby to get this designation but I am ready to celebrate nonetheless. You see, I love popcorn. One of the biggest laughs we have ever experienced while opening Christmas gifts was courtesy of my sister several years ago. A huge box had my name on it but it was too heavy to shake to make a decent guess as to its contents. When I opened it we saw why. Inside was a 50 pound bag of popcorn kernels perfect for my hot air popper. It lasted a long, long timehonest.
Popcorn is low in calories (except when eaten as intended with butter and salt), high in fibre (always a good thing) and quite a bargain (two tablespoons of kernels produce two quarts of popcorn for less than 25 cents.)
Popcorn isn't simply a popular snack food or movie accompaniment. It can be incorporated into meal planing with such savoury items as cheesy popcorn bread, cranberry almond popcorn muffins, popcorn meatloaf or Thai peanut and popcorn-crusted chicken. The mouth waters, no? Well maybe not so much.
Consider instead the rather ordinary, humble bowl of popcorn not dressed up or embellished in an manner. What might that simple popcorn have to teach us about life?
To begin with, a little goes a long way. Just two tablespoons of kernels produce quite a generous amount of popcorn while a similar small act of kindness or generosity can produce quite the bounty. A man was driving home from work one cold evening. As he was stopped for a red light something caused him to glance at the people waiting at the bus stop to his right. He noticed a college-aged man shuffling an armload of books from one hand to the other and then cupping the free hand around his mouth in an attempt to warm it up. With no time to think about it, the man in the vehicle jumped from his car, removed the gloves from his hands and handed them to the younger man at the bus stop. Just as quickly, he ran back to his car so he could join the traffic when the light turned green. Days later, unprecedented levels of snow caused vehicles to struggle making the corner past that bus stop. As the business man took his usual route home he saw that young college student again--this time helping push a vehicle that couldn't maneuver the corner--and wearing the gloves he had been given unexpectedly just days before.
A handful of coins can buy a good deal of popcorn, reminding us we don't have to break the bank to create great things. In regions affected by natural disaster, $5 will buy a life-saving course of antibiotics. In Zimbabwe, a $10 donation can provide regular healthcare to 90 people for a year. A donation to your local food bank can mean the difference between someone having something to eat or going without.
But perhaps the best reminder we can get from popcorn is the amazing, untapped potential contained within the single kernel just waiting for the opportunity to be realized. Yet it doesn't come easy. In fact, until the kernel is placed under intense heat and pressure it will remain but a kernel. But when the pressure inside gets high enough, the kernel explodes and turns into a fluffy piece of popcorn. If the temperature is not high enough it simply won't pop and become what it is expected to be. Until it is subjected to pressure and heat there is no popcorn. Sometimes the same can be said of us. As hard as it may be to experience, sometimes it isn't until we endure intense heat and pressure in life that we become who we were meant to be. We need to be put through a refining process to see what we are truly made of and what we can become.
So the next time you munch on a handful of popcorn or simply take in its aroma, think of what it took for those kernels to become something greater than they once were. Then, think of the amazing ways we can impact our community and our world once our hard shells are removed and everything that is imaginable becomes possible. Kernels pop one at a time and our world changes one life at a time. That's my outlook.
