Life IS Like a Box of Chocolates

There are some occasions in which I log onto social media and I see the same posts pop up on my Newsfeed over and over again.  Have any of you out there ever experienced this?

Perhaps you've seen lots of articles about the 2016 Presidential Elections where it's Trump did this and Clinton did that.  While I don't doubt that the American elections are more like a soap opera than the Canadian elections were last year, sometimes you wish you had a social media remote control to change the channel.

I know a lot of my friends on social media like to sell things and promote businesses on their own pages - which I absolutely encourage everybody to do in order to increase their wages.  That said, sometimes I log onto my page and it's like I stumbled onto the Scentsy Headquarters!  But again, more power to those who sell their wares online!

And then there's all those clickbait posts that promise to show you gross videos like cysts getting popped and people getting decapitated on roller coasters, or Jaden Smith doing...well, who knows what to himself that actually take you to a pop-up ad paradise that can seriously damage your computer.  My question is...why would anyone even want to see that stuff?  Cysts popping is gross, decapitation makes me want to throw up...and do I need to repost the "Whip My Hair" video that Jaden's sister did a few years ago?  I cringe just thinking about it.

So, where am I going with this?

Well, lately I've been seeing an ad for a site called "22 Words", and this ad features Forrest Gump and the classic line about chocolates.  Apparently it's a line that most people quote incorrectly as "life is like a box of chocolates".  But the real quote is "My mother always said like was like a box of chocolates...you never know what you're gonna get."

(For the record, I always quoted it correctly.  Loved Forrest Gump!)

But I got to thinking how true that was in regards to life.  Forrest's mother was absolutely right when she said that life was like a box of chocolates.

In a typical box of Pot of Gold, or whatever brand of chocolates you like to gift underneath the Christmas tree, you have chocolates that are your absolute favourites, chocolates that are just okay, and chocolates that would make you swear off the stuff for years.  I guess you could also say that the days on a calendar are sort of like a box of chocolates, but as far as I know there is no such thing as a 365 piece box of chocolates.  I don't even want to think of how much a box like that would cost!

So, let's just stick with a 30-piece box of chocolates, and go through it month by month.

Imagine the chocolate box is two layers deep - each layer containing fifteen different pieces of chocolate.  The top part of the box is the first half of the month, and the bottom part is the second half of the month.  And, this is just hypothetical too.  Your box of chocolate may vary depending on what you envision yours to look like.

Your first thought when selecting which piece of chocolate you want for the day might be to gravitate towards your favourite kind to ensure that your day is absolutely perfect.  For me, that would be any chocolate that has a peanut butter or peppermint filling.  If I'm having a fantastic day where everything goes right, and where I am generally happy, then I consider that a peanut butter or peppermint kind of day.  And whenever there is a box of assorted chocolates, I always try to get the peanut butter or peppermint candies first.

(Well, at least the peppermint ones.  My sister and I would fight over the peanut butter ones.)

Sometimes you have days in which nothing really exciting happens, but nothing terrible happens either.  It's just a plain ordinary day with no flavour and no excitement.  That's kind of how I feel about white chocolate in particular.  White chocolate is not very flavourful, and definitely not my first choice in chocolate picking - but it does satisfy you and it is edible.  I have a feeling that today is going to end up being a white chocolate kind of day.

You know how you have days in which you are feeling sick, and you don't even have the energy to get out of bed?  That's what I call a chocolate covered strawberry day.  Granted, everybody is going to have a differing opinion as to what chocolate combo will make them sick.  In my case, I'm allergic to strawberries (thankfully not fatally), and whenever I see chocolate covered strawberries, or strawberry fruit creme inside of a chocolate, I try to stay away from them because I know that they will make me very sick.

This example also showcases that different people can be made sick in different ways.  While chocolate covered strawberries might require a trip in an ambulance for me, other people may see them as a delightful treat.  Again, it all depends on personal opinion and how we see the world because it's all different.

In minor cases of sickness - such as the sniffles or a sore throat - I simply see that day as a chocolate that I simply don't like.  For me, that'd be anything that combines chocolate with coconut.  I never did like coconut - and will probably hate coconut until the days that I can no longer chew chocolate.

Then there are days in which you feel incredibly sad and feel as though you want to hide away from the world.  Certainly we've all had feelings like that, and the way that I see those days is through dark chocolate.  And when I say dark chocolate, I don't mean the delicious pieces of Hershey's Special Dark chocolate that you find in a bag of Hershey's Miniatures either.  I mean the stuff with 85% cocoa extract that gives dark chocolate an intensely bitter aftertaste.  That is the perfect flavour for a day that is filled with intense sadness and bitterness.  I think there was a time during my teen years where it seemed like I was eating dark chocolate every single day! 

These days, I very rarely eat dark chocolate.  Maybe it's because I'm in a good place in life at this time...or maybe it has to do with the fact that I can't stand the bitter taste of it.  Seriously, pure dark chocolate is hard to stomach.

But suppose you take that dark chocolate and cover something sweet with it - like, say caramel for example.  And maybe if you're feeling kind of teary-eyed, you could sprinkle some sea salt on top.  I suppose that could simulate a day in which you have had a sad memory but somehow you can find some joy inside.  I suppose that dark chocolate caramel day came in the form of yesterday when I was paying my final respects to my cousin who passed away last weekend.  While saying a final goodbye to a cousin that I had met a few times in my life was a sad occasion, it was also really good to see several other cousins (in some cases for the first time) in the process.  I even remarked that after meeting some of my cousins for the first time that I suddenly started to make a whole lot of sense!  So, yes...definitely yesterday was a dark chocolate caramel kind of day.

So, you go through, eating the first fifteen chocolates in the top layer, and then once day 16 rolls around, you have the same exact flavours of chocolate that you had the previous half of the month.  The question is...do you eat them the same exact way, or do you switch it up a bit?  Whatever the case, once we finish the first box, the following month our boxes replenish themselves and we get an new chance to shape the incoming month.  Sometimes we have the power to choose our destinies, and other times we don't.

But that's the way life is.  You never know what you're gonna get.

And now I want chocolate.