Candy Kisses

"Life is like a box of chocolates - you never know what you're going to get."   ~Forrest Gump

Yesterday, in a fit of spontaneity, I bought myself a box of chocolates.  It wasn't a fancy box of chocolates, just one of your normal drug store variety.

I went home and offered one to my roommate.  She wanted to look at the handy little diagram for a caramel.  I wouldn't let her by quoting Forrest.  Like a good sport, she chose carefully and got exactly what she wanted.

Randomly during the night, I would open up that box of chocolates, choose carefully, take a bite, grimace and throw the chocolate away.  By the end of the night, I was losing faith in my chocolate choosing ability.  Before running to a meeting today, gathering up all my stuff, I looked over at that box of chocolates, so full of promise.  But, remembering my recent experiences with it, I turned away, leaving it untouched, secretly hoping my roommates would finish it off before I got home.  (Laughable since most of it is left)

It got me thinking.  Right now, life kind of feels like that box of chocolates.   The future is wide open before me.  Anything can happen.  But every bite I've taken lately has left me wondering how a person can be so bad at making decisions.  Is life just composed of chocolate creams?

Still stumped, I started thinking back to the reason I made that spontaneous purchase.  There I was, in the drug store, craving a specific type of candy that I could buy for 30 NTD (about 1 USD).  But I was not in Taiwan where such candy could be purchased.  So I cast my eyes around and looked for the next best thing - bridge mix.  Certain brands of it have one or two pieces similar to that candy in Taiwan.  None available, I started looking for something with variety, hoping that amidst choices, I could find the thing I was wanting.  Hence, a box of chocolates.

But was I wanting a box of chocolates?  Nope.  I was wanting something very specific and was simply looking for a suitable substitute.  But when you crave grape chocoballs, not even the nicest chocolates can suffice.

That is probably like my life too.  I only have a few very specific goals for my life.  If those don't happen, then will everything else end up being distasteful?  Sometimes my ambitions scare me.

However, it's not like these goals are a whim like my spontaneous box of chocolates.  I've been training and preparing for this point in my life.  You can say my tastes have been conditioned.  In some sense, I didn't buy just any box of chocolates.  I chose carefully between the collection of pecan, nuts and creams, truffles and dark chocolate varieties for the collection most suited to my tastes.  So, if in life, I've been conditioned to crave chocoballs, then surely, somewhere in that box of chocolates, there is a chocoball.

Note to self:
Life is like a box of chocolates.  Even if you get a few 'duds', don't give up hope.  Keep trying, keep looking.  One day you'll find what it is you've been craving!