Le Weekly - 2 - Meat Factory
One quote, one shoutout, one story, one neigh from Philosophical Horse and one question.
Greetings everyone. Welcome to Le Weekly!
Take a moment to reflect on each snippet. Comment your thoughts below.
Le Quote 🗣️
“Time to change the world” – Nick Archibald (as he wakes up in the morning).
Le Shoutout 🧣
Can a single person change the world? Nick Archibald believes so, so he repeats the quote above to himself every day.
Last week, Nick visited Cape Town for a few days. We met for a coffee, gave each other a quick fist bump, and then spoke about career and life.
Nick currently hosts two radio shows on 5FM. So, when posed with the question, "If you had a microphone that allowed you to speak to every person in the world and tell them five things, what five things would you tell them?" Nick said:
Say "It's time to change the world" to yourself every day.
Scream in the car, genuinely. Just get it out.
Play Golf. It doesn't need to be golf, but play golf.
Go into nature. We have the most beautiful country in the world. Take off those horse blinders.
Be kind. You genuinely don't know what people are going through.
Shoutout Nick.
Le Story ✍️
A few months ago, I spent two weeks in a meat factory in Paarl. I slotted into the biltong trimming team. Most things were fairly easy to learn except for this one movement I just couldn't grasp: removing the silverskin from the rump.
Silverskin is a “sheet” of extremely tough connective tissue that covers certain muscles. Due to being chewy and generally inedible, you need to remove it.
I watched in awe as everyone around me gracefully removed the silverskin with one smooth stroke of the knife. When I tried to replicate the movement, I couldn't. The more I tried to get the technique right, the worse I got. The worse I got, the more my body tensed up, and the more concerned everyone around me looked. One day, I was told to just calm down, cut slowly and focus on the motion itself, not the force.
So, here I was in the middle of a butchery in Paarl, breathing deeply and practising inner peace so that I could successfully remove inedible connective tissue from a piece of meat.
And you know what? Calming down worked. As soon as I slowed down, relaxed, and simply focused on the motion (and not the force applied), the difficult action became easy. Slowly but surely, I got better and faster.
“Slow is smooth, smooth is fast”.
Le Neigh from Philosophical Horse 🐴
“Neigh”
Le Question 🤔
Whether it’s the whole world or just one person’s world, how can you change the world today?
Have a great Monday, everyone!
(Remember to send this to someone who you think would enjoy Le Weekly)
– Le Editor