Life Ratios

Vitruvian Man
Leonardo DaVinci

I just heard an interesting NPR story about a new cookbook , Ratio, teaching the basics of cooking through ratios. It does not teach you how to spice or determine flavors. This book teaches how to make the basics by the ratios of simple ingredients. For example: Pie dough - 3-2-1. 3 parts flour, 2 parts butter, 1 part water.

In the story they made a quiche. With the basic ratios, you get a basic quiche. The fun part is now you can experiment with spices, veggies, bacon, mushrooms, whatever you want to put into it. Talk about an interesting concept. I wonder how it applies to life.

So many creative endeavors these days have very precise recipes for how to do them. If you want to paint something, you can get paint by numbers which pinpoints every exact color and placement. If you want to learn music, there are so many detail-heavy guitar and piano learning systems that teach you how to play certain songs.

I wonder if we are getting to discrete in our learning of the arts? In photography, I can find things called "setting up the perfect portrait." and many other techniques that teach a very specific setup. Use your camera on this setting. Set the tripod up like this. Put one light at 45 degrees above and to the side of the subject and then the other on down and to the opposite side. I guess those are good for learning lighting basics, but God, I hate exact methods for taking a photo.

A friend of mine got hired by a photography company to take graduation pics during the local university commencement. They had very tight procedures for exactly how to take the photo. I know they wanted to control the output and to minimize set up time between students, but it took the soul out of the photos. I would have quit after a day.

I celebrate the basic premise of this book. It is very important to learn fundamentals in any endeavor. Through a solid foundation, you can experiment and try new things to make it uniquely yours.

So, what are life's ratios? Are there basic ratios that we can apply and experiment with in our daily living? Would they be too limiting? How about the daily ratio of: 2 parts work, 2 parts sleep, 1 part eating, 1part chores and recreation? What you do during any of those parts is your choice, but overall the ratio is successful.

Another fun one, the perfect date: 2 parts dinner and fine wine or some other activity of choice, 1 part dessert, a pinch of looking into eachothers' eyes, 1 part of listening per person, two pinches of ... pinching, 1 part stroll along a romantic place of choice, 1 part deep kissing, 3 parts foreplay, 2 parts sex, flavor with love and intimacy to taste. Is that too limiting?

I am kind of mocking the life ratios thing, but maybe there are true life ratios that help keep things in balance. I would prefer to live by ratios than recipes. Can you think of any life recipes or ratios?