Hope you have the spoons for this

If you spend any significant amount of time around busy and overworked people, you'll likely have heard them say something to the effect of, “I just don’t have the spoons for this today.”

This phrase originated due to a tendency for people with chronic illness to have a Sisyphean relationship with their flatware. The American writer Christine Miserandino coined it in a 2003 article titled The Spoon Theory, using spoons as a metaphor for the limited energy she has to allocate to daily tasks. It's a grueling feeling of perpetual triage. You're “out of spoons” when you haven’t done the dishes, you need to shower, your apartment is messy, the fridge is empty, and you only have the strength to fix one of those.

It's analogous to a Douglas Adams fan saying, “I can’t today, I don’t know where my towel is.” Except that spoon theory is a cyclical feeling of constantly teetering on the edge of burnout and exhaustion, while the towel thing is a bit more nuanced for anyone who’s ever been stranded in an unfamiliar city. 

The interesting thing about spoons is how often we stumble across them. They pop up as metaphors, sometimes at the writer’s behest and sometimes by accident, in a surprising variety of historical and modern media. 

Spoons in history and tradition

For example, the spoon is a metaphor for a primary responsibility in the movie Cool Hand Luke. The prisoners on the chain gang had only one possession: a spoon. If you lose your spoon, you “spend a night in the box”, which I suppose is better than spending a day in the box. 

In Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Alan Rickman’s Sheriff Nottingham threatens to cut the hero's heart out with a spoon—because, as you may remember, “it will hurt more.”

In a less dramatic and more comedic vein, we have The Tick’s battle cry, “SPOOOOOON!” It's a triumphant and joyful boast that says “I have my spoon; I am nigh invulnerable.”

Also, there was the quirky trend of state spoon souvenirs in the heyday of the American highway system. Oh, the giddy anticipation a spoon collector must have felt when embarking on a trip down I-95 from Maine to Florida, picking up all the new state spoons to add to their collection along the way. Imagine the radiant pride of completing a full set of state spoons—and the excitement such a person might feel at the prospect of a new state joining the Union, so they could have an opportunity to go spooning one more time. You could imagine a buddy comedy with two mismatched characters, like an unassuming retiree and a burly Hell's Angel, who have nothing in common except their state spoon collections.

So, what’s up with spoons? What Jungian neuron cluster that evolved in prehistoric humans decided that spoons are so pleasing? Is it just a coincidence that they show up in places from medieval illuminated manuscripts to modern comic books, movies, and neurodivergent vernacular?

And it doesn't end there. A useful possibility for a creative writer is that the spoon metaphor or archetype can be shoehorned into new scenes in existing cultural narratives. For example, one can imagine a retelling of the Bible's temptation story where the devil offers soup instead of bread, and Jesus refuses to take a spoon from his Cousin Lucy because he’s a stubborn little daddy’s boy. It would be very dramatic, and aggrieved Christians would surely boycott it, but it would give two choice actors an opportunity to chew the scenery together playing good versus evil. That’s a free suggestion for anyone looking to get in on that sweet public domain Jesus IP. 

Spoons would work well with the loaves and fishes parable, too. What if, instead of bread and fish, we put Jesus in Stone Soup? He wouldn't contribute to the pot, but he could miraculously multiply one spoon into many to provide for everyone. It would cut right to the point of the story, if you ask me. 

In fact, let’s just go ahead and start a tradition where secular non-theists give their friends a very definitely fancy spoon for the winter solstice. Because it seems like, regardless of cultural trends, governments, or dominant religious and cultural norms throughout history, we acknowledge that society is better when everyone has their spoons sorted out. 

I’m not sure how willing my erstwhile employers are willing to go along with this bit, but one can imagine a world where a reader-funded secular outlet like this one has a winter subscription drive with a subscription tier that comes with a deluxe OnlySky branded spoon and towel set. It would compare favorably to the proverbial PBS tote bag. Who couldn’t use a few extra spoons in times like these?

The alternative to spoons

It may seem odd that I’ve spent this column babbling about kitchen utensils, but the alternative is to think about global geopolitical conflict. Spoons are simpler. I can’t tell you whether climate change, spreading fascism and theocracy, and looming US-Iranian conflict will lead to a future barren hellscape. But whatever the future holds, you’ll still need a spoon when you get there. May as well think about the spoons. Not a hell of a lot of good I can do about the rest of it. 

I’ll have a problem if this column goes viral, though. Our discourse has become so absurd that spoons would surely become the next hot-button culture-war issue. Religious right preachers would pound the pulpit to assert the immorality of sporks. Smarmy conservative pundits would argue that spork users should be legally forced to pick one or the other (despite the sheer utilitarian brilliance of the tactical 3-in-1 spork with built-in serrated knife and  fire starter). 

Perhaps I'm belaboring my own point, but in an attempt to tie this column up in a nice little bow: We're besieged with worrisome news and stress-inducing information on many fronts in today’s media landscape. Perhaps the best thing any of us can do, metaphorically, is take some time to get our spoons sorted out and maybe even make sure we have a few good backup spoons tucked away for emergencies.

Anyway, until next time, may your days be spoonful and feel free to buy some “In Spoon We Trust” AI propaganda that I made for my Redbubble shop, if you feel like supporting my endeavors.