Sometimes, you’ve got to approach life a bit unhinged. I hope you enjoy!
It begins, as most Monday lunch breaks do, at the drive-up window of Del Taco. My ritual, as I step out of the office door, is to ask everyone and no one in particular if I’ve been to Del Taco yet this week.
The bag is warm in my hands, a few spots tenderly kissed with grease. It’s full of promise and cholesterol — the kind of promise that says, “I know I won’t feel well after this, but I’m doing it anyway.”
The girl with too much blush and eyeliner gives me the look of someone who’s served thousands of late-night snackers and lunch-hour knaves. But when I press my face against the bag and inhale, dragging cinnamon sugar straight into my soul, she smiles. Not a smirk. Not pity. Just a silent acknowledgment between two people who know what happiness smells like.
My car rolls forward toward the exit, one hand on the wheel. The other hand is in the bag, brushing across the tops of seven churros lined up like sugar-encrusted soldiers.
Lunch is served.
It’s got nothing to do with hunger. This is all ritual.
For years, the talking bobbleheads have told us that fulfillment lives just on the other side (the very far side) of discipline—that journey of a thousand miles. On glass. Barefoot. If we just track enough habits, drink enough green sludge that tastes like shame feels, or chant enough morning affirmations that are taped awkwardly to our mirrors, we’ll arrive. Somewhere. Someday.
And maybe some of that matters. But the longer I live, the more I suspect the real magic isn’t in the things you optimize — or the things that optimize you. It’s in the things that make you feel ridiculous yet alive.
Like buying seven churros for no defensible reason that I’ll still have to defend in a budget meeting with my wife and my pancreas.
Here’s the thing: nobody eats a churro with a spreadsheet open. (Okay, I do). Nobody calculates the macros of cinnamon joy. A churro is a subtle act of defiance in a world that keeps asking you to justify literally everything.
I take the first bite at a red light, letting the molten center burn the roof of my mouth. I don’t care. The sugar-sweet goodness mutes the pain. My steering wheel gets sticky. Cinnamon sugar cascades down my shirt. A woman in a passing SUV sees me mid-bite, grinning like a fool, and for one fleeting second, I am not a grown man eating excessive dessert for lunch at 10:30 am. I am the conqueror of small, diabetes-coated victories.
And this is where the manifesto begins:
- I declare that joy does not need a business case.
- I declare that one-handed driving while holding a churro is a skill, not a liability (and also a liability).
- I declare that sometimes the answer isn’t in your calendar—it’s at the drive-thru window.
- I declare that if you buy seven churros, you eat seven churros—none of this “I’ll save three for later” nonsense.
Because life, as it turns out, is not lived in later. (Disclaimer: if you eat seven churros in one sitting on a regular basis, later might come sooner than you want.)
Churros are not self-help and yet are the epitome of it. They are not a shortcut to enlightenment but are most definitely a hack for happiness. And, they are simply, profoundly this: a reminder that for all the ways the world asks you to run faster, grind harder, carry more, and explain yourself—sometimes, you just get to stop. You get to sit in a car that smells like sugar and fried dough and tell the universe: not today, I’m doing this instead.
Maybe you’ll finish all seven. Maybe you’ll share one with that coworker who practically floats after you on the scent of joy wrapped in paper—but only because you feel generous and slightly unhinged. Or maybe you’ll stare at the last churro in the bag, your coworker waiting hopefully, and whisper, “you’ve been chosen,” before taking those final, glorious bites.
This isn’t about the churros.
It’s about permission.
Here it is. The short, sweet, cinnamon-dusted truth:
- Eat the churro.
- Write the words no one asked for but that everyone needs.
- Take the victory lap that looks like nothing from the outside but feels like sugar-fueled rebellion and regret on the inside.
And if anyone asks why, tell them you’ve signed the manifesto. Tell them that for one small, delicious moment, you remembered that life is not an audit. It’s deep fat fried goodness in a paper bag.
Seven churros doth a lunch make.
And that is enough.
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