Thursday 27 June 2013

Relationships and the cake from Woolworths

You go to Woolworths to buy your favourite cake ever, you get there and find that you are spoilt for choice. You haven't had this cake in a while, you've been hearing people and friends talk about just how fresh, tasty and good Woolworths' cakes are. So out of that, you just pick any from the shelves and walk to the counter to pay.

Satisfied just by the thought of how you will devour this cake when you get home and tell everyone just how delicious the cake is; you pay and say to the cashier with a broad smile on your face "keep the change".

You drive back home as fast as you can, images of you enjoying the cake seem to involuntarily force your foot to accelerate the car so you can get home quicker. finally, you get home, you take the cake out of its container and you look at it for some time. Thing is, you want to appreciate it for a little while before you take a bite. So then you take your first bite and tastes rather odd, not as your expected or as your friends said it would. So you spit it out and take another bite, this time the cake tastes even worse than before.

So you take the container look at it and try to see if you bought the right cake. You inspect, twist and turn the container, you find that it really is what you went to buy and thought you bought. You decide to give it another chance, maybe it will taste better this time, you think to yourself. You take another bite at the cake and find that it now tastes worse than before. So you decide to look at every finer detail of the container this time, and sadly you come to find that the cake you expensively bought has expired.

But you can't understand it, everyone said Woolworths sold the freshest cakes. Everyone spoke of how they enjoy the cakes from there. You ask yourself "but why me?" and you also ask a couple of people as well "why me?". They respond and say and ask you: "but why did you pay for something before looking at the container?" You are disappointed by their lack of sympathy for you and because none them mentioned that you should first inspect the container.

You think conclude that nobody understands you. Nobody understands that you also wanted to know how cakes from Woolworths tasted like. You are saddened more because you paid more at the counter for a cake that has expired and you didn't have time to inspect it.

Most of the time in our lives we buy an expired cake, especially in relationships. We are usually told that guys from church, from rural areas or ladies from so and so are the best. We are in such a hurry to experiment that we forget to look at the ingredients or expiry date. We are in a hurry to feel just what others feel and to also have something to share when they all talk about thee Woolworths cake.

So we get to the shelves that are fully packed with a variety of things but hastily pick anything that we can grab first and sacrifice more for it for a mere craving. We long for what others have been having and think that their source of happiness will also be ours. Few days or a month later we learn of how bad a partner is and he or she gets worse with time. Then we ask "why me?", we can't understand, we blame God, our friends and even perhaps the church or the shop.

But who bought the food/item without first checking the specifications. Who hastily paid for the item without inspecting and reviewing its ingredients? And who desired something so much that he or she'd ignore the expiry date only to find that he or she can't bare the taste? It definitely is not the shop, it is not your friend, your church or even the government. It is you and only you.

So young man, young woman, divorcee or friend. Take your time really, inspect that which you are about to buy while still at the shelves, inspect it at the counter, as you walk out the door and as you drive home, continue to admire it thoroughly. Take your time finding pleasure in just admiring the small print, finer detail per detail, print per print, before you commit to it. Don't just grab anything because of the name of the shop, the name of the church or what somebody else said. Never be in such a hurry to miss the fun of enjoying the process of learning about something or someone, reading its ingredients and reviewing its potential taste-life-span.

No matter where you buy, take your time at the shelves inspecting your cake before you even decide to buy it.

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