There is some truth to Forrest Gump's saying "Life is like a box of chocolates...you never know what you're gonna get." But I have to somewhat disagree with this statement. When you get a box of chocolates, but KNOW there will be some bad ones in there. You know you will inevitablly bite into the strawberry cream or the cherry jelly filled pieces if you arent paying attention. You know you will like some of them and and you will hate some of them. BUT now days...Whittman's chocolate marketing team has gotten smart - they label the inside of the box with what each piece of chocolate contains. You KNOW what you're getting yourself into; you know which pieces to avoid like the plague. You can enjoy the carmel and marshmellow and dark chocolate pieces and throw the other ones away. Life is NOT like this. You can't pick out the fun, delicious times and set aside all of those moments you dont want to experience. So...like is not always like a box of chocolates.
So today, I've decided like is like a bag of oranges - let me explain. When you go to the store and you're walking through the produce section you see this nice bag of delicious Florida oranges. 10 golden, perfect oranges in the bag. One the outside they look beautiful like the ones you see on orange juices boxes; no bruises, no punctures. Perfect. You cannot wait to get home to eat the Vitamin C goodness - the juice filing your mouth as you take that first bite.
You peel the first orange. The skin is tough and thick. By the time you get the skin off, the orange is half the size of which you started. The second orange has thin skin that peals off easily, but as you break the segments apart, you realize that almost the entire orange is that gross stringy white stuff instead of the meat of the fruit. The third is filled with millions of seeds. The fourth is bitter and you can barely keep from crying each time you take a bite. The fifth is a combination of the other four. So...by the end of the week - here you are 5 oranges into the bag and you're very unsatisfied. Do you throw away the bag and forfeit the other 1/2 guessing that they may be like the other crappy fruits? Or do you give them a shot, praying that they will taste like you imagined them to? Maybe it would be better to have tried to enjoy a juicy orange, wasting 5 minutes of your day to peel it in hopes that you can enjoy at least 30 cents of your bag of oranges purchase.
This is exactly like life. Things may seem perfect on the outside - untarnished, balanced, symetrical and beautiful. But as you walk through like, experiencing each day, each moment, you realize that no day or experience is the same. Even if you imagined or planned it to be that way. Sometimes life is a combination of unexpecteds. Then, halfway through life, you're ready to give up because things haven't gone your way; you think that things may not get better. But that's the gamble you must make. You must decide it's better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all. Better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all. Life is worth experiencing those disgusting, sour, bland, stringy times so that you can savior those satisfying moments when everything seems "just like you imagined" them to be.
I don't even really like oranges. I the juice they produce. I dont like how they leave your hands sticky and smelly all day. But again, like life, you never know what the fuss is all about until you dive in and experience things hands on. I think I might buy a bag of oranges this afternoon...I could use a little variety in my life.
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