As I was sending a message to my future husband I never knew yet and I am sharing a story to him about someone I know whose heart was shattered into a million pieces by someone he thought would bring him eternal happiness, I realized we can attribute our search for love to finding the perfect dish that suits our palette that we are willing to eat for the rest of our lives.
As we know there are different kinds of dishes. Some harm us, turn us into addicts, make us feel healthy, make us feel happy and satisfied, and probably other positive and negative emotions that would affect our well-being.
The Perfect Dish
They are healthy and they are appealing enough to your liking. I guess this is probably a dream food that you are willing to eat for the rest of your life especially if you know it will make you have eternal happiness and contentment. Like love, this is probably the perfect scenario wherein, you want them in your life, and they would make your life worthwhile for the rest of your life.
The Allergens
We know that it’s unfortunate for some people that they cannot eat everything as they pleased. Even if the mind is telling you that this food is good for their body, it is not. These types of people who come into our lives have good intentions, but for some reason we don’t respond well whenever food enters our bodies - or when it comes to love… our life. It was like you know they are a good person, a capable spouse, but it would affect our well-being or the people around us if we still try to make it work with them.
The Junks
The mind is telling us that if we really want to have them, we can enjoy them, but as people say, always IN MODERATION. However, admit it or not, these foods make us feel so good, give us dopamine rush, and make us happy. We even eat it whenever we want to watch shows or to probably just kill our boredom. Similar to love, these types of people would give us those giddy feelings that if not careful, we would go down peril… aka leading to unhealthy lifestyle or relationship.
Drugs and Alcohol
If there is one thing we know from smokers and any person who is addicted to something, they always say that once you start trying, you won’t stop. I think this is similar to when we already know that someone is a walking red flag. A person or a thing that would do us no good, and yet for some reason there was this part of us that would say, I want to try it, just once… just a bit… then turned into maybe a little more, or twice… until you didn’t realize that it was harming you not only physically, but mentally, emotionally and maybe spiritually. Then you feel like you cannot escape rock bottom that you need to keep on taking it, or being with this red flag person, because that’s the only time you feel high or existent in life… or their life.
Like any form of drugs and alcohol addiction, we need someone to bring us back into reality, but of course that starts with admitting that we need help. Help to get out of the mess we’ve been into. This is where your support system is much needed - to help you get out of your mess… or love mess with a prospective romantic person who caused us physical, psychological and even emotional damage. This also meant you need to do a lot of internal cleaning, maybe being sober for a very, very long time. In relationships, this would mean taking a break, creating boundaries on what kind of people we can tolerate to enter in our lives without losing ourselves and needing to pick up the pieces these people destroyed when they came into our lives.
The Unappealing, but Healthy Dish
Kind of weird that I put this last right? I wanted to put this last because I think this is the core of what I felt that someone I’m referring to in the first paragraph of this blog might be experiencing or encountering right now…
We know that there are foods that are healthy, our internal organs can actually take it, but our five senses and brain cannot phantom for that food to get inside our body. I know whenever we eat unappealing but healthy foods, there is a tendency that our brain is sending signals that they do not like the food, so the tendency we tend to retch, vomit or experience sudden feelings of discomfort. Isn’t this the same as when we meet a person that we are not attracted to? We felt like retching, or pretending to be cool only deep down you want to just run away because your senses cannot take what your brain is sending to them?
Then you have elders who would always say these foods may be unappealing, but it’s good for your health. Some kids would learn to like or eat those unappealing healthy foods as they grow older, some would be so stubborn that they would make sure they wouldn’t try it. In love, I’m sure we encountered a lot of people in our lives especially prospective lovers where they kept on saying they are the ones that won’t bring you misery or suffering in your life, but they know that they are unappealing in the eyes of the majority and sometimes you can’t just live with that.
There are two possible ways for this unappealing food to be loved: Forced if you don’t like it, but you have to because as much as the food is really not delicious, you still have to agree that it brings nutrients to your body. Like love, maybe that person is so unappealing, but they gave you security in terms of emotional, financial, etc. However because you are in a state of no choice (e.g. sick) or lacking any resources to gain access to those appealing but quite expensive dishes, you end up sticking with them. After all, the only thing that technically affects you is your level of attraction to that person. I mean if the person you are most attracted to has the qualities that that unattractive person that came into your life right now, you would even hope and wish that you two would be together forever right?
Then, as you grow older, you’ll realize people who are not allergic to unappealing healthy foods would resort to saying I am going to eat this type of food if it is prepared that way. Maybe when it comes to love or making someone like an unattractive food, maybe we just need to prepare or present them differently. After all, bitter melons are really not delicious, but if they are visually appealing or maybe you add a bit of sugar to combat the bitterness of it, it wouldn’t feel bad at all. I remember when we went out to celebrate my youngest brother’s birthday, my dad ordered liver. My family knows how much I hate eating liver, but that day… mind you I was the one who finished that dish… That dish I sincerely dread. When my dad saw it and I commented that the dish tasted good, he said you know local Chinese chefs have a certain way to prepare the dish that would make it taste good. I guess my point is… maybe we just need to change a tiny bit of ourselves to make ourselves more appealing, more presentable and maybe more tolerable to their senses. After all they said looks are the first thing that people see right? We cannot expect and hope that if only or I wish people would take a chance on us, they wouldn’t regret it at all. Mostly true, but we should know that not everyone has that mindset and not everyone is willing to take a chance on us. If there might be someone who is willing to take a chance on us, it’s rarely the perfect dish, it would be some other form of dishes or substance that would make us miserable.
I guess I would like to say that maybe a lot of us are unappealing, but healthy dishes. But in any unappealing and healthy dish, presentation matters, the way they prepare us matters, and the way we blend with other ingredients matters… I think with the right mindset, the right ingredients and giving our trust to the head chef (which when it comes to love is our Father Almighty), we can be the perfect dish to someone that would give them eternal happiness and contentment.
