The Potato book, Put Your Potatoes on the Desktop, reveals that life is a journey in which each unique individual encounters their own set of potatoes (stressors, challenges, adventures). We each live within the story of our lives, in which we play the role of the main character. How will we negotiate our way through the challenges and conflicts our story presents? How do we get a sense of identity, that is, who we understand we are, and how does our identity translate into the particular potatoes we are interested, able, and willing to be involved in, as the story of our life unfolds?
Chapter 1 of the Potato book establishes the reality and normality of emotions in our journey. The book likens emotions to arms and legs, but if I were to write this book today, I would have said eyes and ears rather than arms and legs. As eyes and ears serve as sensory organs, so our emotions appear to serve a sensory function, in that they detect the challenges, problems, etc., that we meet in our life journey. Therefore, we must become aware that the emotions themselves are not our problems; rather, they are the problem detectors. In chapter 3, potatoes are established as representing the problems or challenges we face. Therefore, our emotions are the “potato detectors.”
Chapter 1 continues to outline the difference between relating with our problems or challenges within a destructive versus constructive mindset. Since our brains are highly organized to gear toward the visual sense, and since we are relational creatures, we often default to relate our emotions to what we see with our eyes. In most cases, we see and therefore relate with the person who is responsible for the problem or challenge our emotions detect, and we end up blaming ourselves or someone else, relating with the person as if they are the problem. We understand that this is illogical and irrational, because it is not our eyes that are detecting the potatoes; rather, it is our emotions that are detecting them.
We do not see them, but the potatoes our emotions detect are definitely there! It is when we learn to relate our emotions with what they are detecting (the potato), that we become rational or logical. We become able to form the constructive mindset, and are free to relate with ourselves and others in an honouring way. We are free to relate and interact with life, the story which includes the potatoes (challenges) that we meet, and free to experience the emotions that detect them.
Chapter 2 basically states that if we are in a destructive mindset, then we are at risk, in our attempt to communicate, to throw the potato at others (or even at ourselves). In doing so, we do not actually let go of the potatoes. They nevertheless remain in our possession, and we end up amplifying the number of potatoes we juggle, unnecessarily complicating our relationships in an adversarial fashion.
Chapter 3 establishes that the general flow of potatoes that come our way end up in our sack (or closet), if we relate with them in a destructive mindset. A subtle reality emerges in that if we believe our (or others) emotions are the problems in our life, then we by definition are forming the destructive mindset. Because our emotions are part of us, like having eyes and ears, it is as if we create a short circuit, detecting ourselves as being a problem when we feel, and then feel bad about feeling. The intensity of our emotions can get extremely high in such situations!
So the picture we are establishing is that our lives are about being involved with our life story, represented by the various problems or challenges we get engaged in and that our emotions detect. It is as if we are moving along a road of potatoes. There are only two ways we can direct those potatoes we detect and become passionate about. One road, the destructive path, takes the potatoes into our sack, in which there will be further, and most likely, adverse consequences. The other road, the constructive path, places the potatoes on the desktop, and we are engaged and persevere with the story or our life, accepting the role of our emotions. We become free to sort out our identity and become resilient to work out the challenges that come our way.
If we experience our life primarily within the destructive mindset, then the major path of the potatoes is into our sack. We will nevertheless direct some of the potatoes onto the desktop, but this path will be a minor one.
Chapter 5 of the Potato book discusses the constructive mindset in more detail, establishing the path of getting those potatoes onto the desktop. We are interested to train our emotions and ourselves to find this path and to nurture it, for there is a benefit in our life experience to do so. We can learn to make the path of directing the potatoes onto the desktop become the major “highway,” and the path of putting the potatoes into our sack become the minor “side road.” Unfortunately, we are unable to completely stop putting potatoes into our sack. Despite our best intentions, some will continue to go in there, but we will be much more fulfilled in our lives when the majority of the potatoes go onto the desktop.
Now that we are getting better at putting potatoes onto the desktop, what about all the potatoes we have put into our sack over so many years? Won’t they still affect us? Some of our sacks are overly heavy and overwhelming! The heaviness of those potatoes may have put us at risk of depression or anxiety. What are we to do with those potatoes? These questions are addressed in chapter 7, which is about transferring the potatoes from your sack onto the desktop. In the big picture, we are not interested in keeping our potatoes in our sack; rather, we are interested in having as many as possible of those potatoes in our life journey go onto the desktop.
When we have established the flow of transferring potatoes from our sack onto the desktop, the final result of the flow of potatoes in each of our unique lives will be to direct most of the potatoes onto the desktop as we meet with them in the story of our life. Some, however, will nevertheless go into our sack. Fortunately that will not be the end of the story, as we at some point will have the ability to transfer the potatoes from our sack onto the desktop. The result of this healthy flow of potatoes is a much lighter sack to carry around, more satisfying relationships with ourselves (better self-esteem, less risk of depression, anxiety) and more fulfilling relationships with others.