It's not about the pancakes.

This morning I opened the fridge and found nearly two litres of milk had gone off.

Most people would have tipped it out without a second thought. I made pancakes.

They were excellent — fluffy, tangy, buttermilk style. But taste wasn’t the point. The decision had very little to do with culinary creativity and almost nothing to do with economics.

When I was young, my family didn’t have much. My grandparents lived through occupied Holland. The winter of 1944–45 brought famine. Hunger was not theoretical; it was visceral. Food was survival. Waste was unthinkable. That story settled somewhere deep in me.

If I pause and run the numbers, the whole exercise is irrational. The milk was worth about $2. My employer charges me out at $200 an hour. I spent half an hour making a breakfast my waistline did not need because I could not bring myself to waste $2. Absurd!

But we are not the purely rational, autonomous individuals we imagine ourselves to be.

We like to think our decisions are driven by logic and free choice. In reality, we are profoundly shaped by culture, by memory, by tribe. We inherit instincts. We absorb assumptions. Our desires are carried along by stories older than we realise and trends more powerful than we admit.

You see it in Israel. “Like the nations,” they say, when asking for a king. You see it in the New Testament churches — Corinth aping status culture, Galatia swayed by persuasive voices. We are always thinking and wanting as part of a people.

The way forward is not to pretend we can rise above influence. First, we acknowledge it. We are formed, for better and worse, by those around us. We are less independent than we think.

Second, we choose our company carefully. If we will inevitably be shaped, then fellowship matters. Sit with people whose instincts run toward gratitude, generosity, hope, faith. Worship with a community that re-narrates your desires around Christ rather than consumption.

The pancakes were never about milk. They were a small reminder: we are always being formed. The question is by whom.