The Sweetness of Ignorance
Years later, in medical school,
I learned that our favorite food
was also a silent poison.
My beloved professor Roger used to compare mushroom lovers to the mafia and would often smile and say:
“If a mafia member is elderly, it means he’s new.
If he’s old, he never lived long enough to grow old.
You can’t be both old and elderly in the mafia.
The same goes for mushroom eaters —
you can’t be both old and elderly.
You’re either new and alive, or old and dead.”
That was how I discovered
that mushroom poisoning has its own chapter
in medical education.
If I could meet Roger now,
I’d laugh softly and say:
“Here stands an old and elderly mycophagist.”
What the Elders Knew
Our elders had warned us:
some mushrooms could kill.
But they were never afraid for us.
Because they had already taught us a simple law of life:
Know a few things completely —
and forget the rest.
They made us memorize the safe ones
until we could recognize them like our own names.
We only knew three or four types.
We picked them, cooked them, ate them.
We never asked, “Is this poisonous?”
There was no need.
Instead of identifying hundreds of dangers,
we mastered a handful of certainties.
We knew what to eat —
and that made what not to eat perfectly clear.
A Philosophy in Disguise
Now I see it differently.
That wasn’t just childhood instinct;
it was philosophy.
In this age of FOMO,
when attention shatters into endless fragments,
knowing what you truly want
is the rarest kind of power.
People who don’t know what they desire
drown in thousands of indecisions.
They can’t say no —
and so they never live a full yes.
Michelangelo’s Principle
Michelangelo once said:
“I look at a block of marble,
and I see the angel within it.
I carve until I set the angel free.”
If you can’t see the angel,
you can’t remove the excess.
That’s the same with life.
We carve ourselves free
by knowing what we are not.
The Discipline of Simplicity
Sometimes I call this
a kind of self-ordered autism —
the sacred art of narrowing your focus
until only what truly matters remains.
Are you ready for that kind of clarity?
To kill every alternative,
to forget everything else,
just to reveal the one living truth inside you?
That’s what it means to see the angel.
That’s what it means to know your mushrooms.
Simplicity isn’t the poverty of choice;
it’s the courage to choose once —
and live deeply.
