Imagine you are . . .well . . . you and your life is this
mason jar, filled with what look like shiny, round balls. You are certain these
must be assorted chocolate cordials, though you can’t be sure because the jar
has always been tightly sealed. You’ve often looked long and hard at the jar,
imagining how sweet and luscious the liquid centers to the shiny balls must be.
While you’ve longed to actually test your theory and have a taste of the candy,
you haven’t because the seal on the lid has always been so tight. You’ve just
come to accept that the contents are for gazing at/dreaming about only and are not
meant to actually be sampled.
But one day you start to acquire a real sweet tooth and it
has you wondering about the actual taste of those candies inside the jar more
than ever. This craving intensifies day by day until eventually it becomes
all-consuming and getting at the candy inside is all you can think about. It
suddenly dawns on you that there may be more than one way to release the jar’s
contents.
You could break it.
This thought is very disconcerting because you are not one
for breaking things. In fact, you are incredibly uncomfortable with destruction
of any kind; it’s just not in your makeup. But the longing to test out the
sweetness of the contents is so strong that your find yourself almost
involuntarily nudging the jar inch by inch toward the edge of the shelf, until
one day the jar is just teetering on the edge. You take a deep breath and with
one large exhale you knock the jar off of the shelf.
In
slow
motion,
the jar
falls to the tile floor below
and shatters.
Your greatest fear has been manifested—your life appears
broken and in many pieces on the floor. Broken.
The pace speeds back up to real time.
You fly into action, scrambling to keep the bouncing shiny
balls from scattering away. Your arms are going in every direction and you can’t
seem to work fast enough to stop the crazy bouncing. Your feet and hands are
cut by the glass and the pain starts manifesting as you struggle to contain the
candied contents. Eventually the balls quit bouncing and rolling and you think
you probably gathered most of the pieces up, though it’s probable some will be
lost forever. But most of the candy sits now in one pile with the broken pieces
of glass—some of each, spotted with crimson blood. You pause in a moment of
shock and are still. Then, you remember the motive you had just seconds ago
(was it really only seconds? It seems like days.) You remember you were craving
the rich chocolate, the sweet, flowing-liquid centers.
You reach down, pick up a ball and put it in your mouth. It’s
as sweet and sumptuous as you had always imagined it would be, but a shard of glass
that had stuck to the ball cuts your tongue. It’s OK. From here, you know that
the remaining cordials can gently be wiped clean, the broken glass swept up and
discarded. And while the clean-up process will be tedious and painful (you’re
bound to cut yourself a few more times), you are encouraged by what you’ve now
tasted and you know how sweet the contents of your life really are, and you
intend to devour each piece with passion.
It's like that.
