Why the kitchen went dark

Nobody decides to stop cooking. It just got easier to order. Then ordering became the arrangement, and food became something that arrived in a bag, got eaten on the couch, and was gone. You'd tell anyone who asked that you don't really cook. The kitchen turned into a hallway you walked through to reach the fridge.

That wasn't laziness. Nicotine hits your reward system hard, and next to that jolt, ordinary rewards go faint. A meal you made. A clean counter. A friend at your table. The payoff got too quiet to be worth the trouble. The cigarette muffled every other reward, then posed as the only one left.

Your reward system recalibrates once nobody's shouting at it. Ordinary things can start paying out again. The knife through an onion. The hiss when it hits a hot pan. Enjoying the work of your own hands was God's idea first, and He's giving it back. When the reward comes back, the effort follows it into every room.

Cook one meal this week. Three ingredients, nothing fancy, made slowly, for a friend or for yourself on a real plate. Set the table. Say grace before the first bite. Lord, bless this table I set myself. Then sit down and let that be the whole evening. I made this, and I was here for every bite.