My Heart On a Platter

It's a feeling I get several times daily, and I haven't spoken much of it because I thought it was just me. But yesterday I saw it on the face of one of my line cooks, and now I know I'm not alone.
Here's the thing.
In the course of a day the average guy on the line puts out dozens of steaks, taking care and pride that each one is prepared to perfection. What we're looking for is perfect doneness, beautiful diamond char-marks, just the right amount of seasoning and even cooking. As your portfolio of steaks prepared goes from dozens to hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands, your attention to detail becomes ever greater.
Yesterday was the dreaded Friday lunch rush, and I scheduled the dream team for it, gave what I thought was a rousing speech and BOOM! off we went.
The charbroiler got hit hard, and Nick, the culinary school kid was keeping up well. The steaks came in non stop, and he was putting them on as fast as he could take them off. At one point he had 17 steaks of varying doneness on the broiler, with as many in the window. They all looked good, but there was one in particular that Nick took great pride in.
He set in on the foccaccia with a pained, somewhat wistful look in his eye and said "God that's a beautiful steak." and he was genuinely sad to let it go.
I plated it and put it up in the window to die, where the plates were stacked 2 high and all dying as well waiting for the panicking and overwhelmed FOH people (I call them faux-people) to catch up.
Culinary people are a combination of craftsmen and artists, but the product of our work has a tremendously short lifespan. Perfection is tough to achieve, and there's a desire that you could show your achievement to everyone you know, but the fact of the matter is that in about ten minutes it will be gone. As such a little piece of your heart goes out with every perfect plate you send out.
As an expression of the transitory nature of beauty, of life, of death, of existence, of pain and joy, there's no greater medium than food.