Life - A chocolate mould

One day my wife was preparing her delicious home-made chocolate and I was given the work of wrapping them up. As usual I was lost in my thoughts staring at one of the mould slabs that had different shapes and sizes. Suddenly I was thrilled to feel that the slab had the entire meaning of life hidden in it. While you were thinking that I had gone crazy, my wife politely asked me "How?"

Well, the answer was simple. If you look at the different spheres of life - profession, family life, social life and your personal time that you spend with your own self are life's different moulds. The way you shape them up and the flavors you add, would eventually give you the taste of life.

The chocolate making process and life got co-related in a very out of the ordinary way with a recent incident. We (My wife and I) were exhibiting our chocolates in a mall and there I bumped into my old classmate who was running one of his showrooms there. Sitting with him and listening to his different business ventures, it was getting impossible to really gauge his wealth then. To avoid feeling awkward any further, I simply asked him, “So, you must be having fun of your life with your family and friends!” His straight answer made me feel so miserable for him. I really thought at that moment that I was the richest of all. He said, “Brother, today is Sunday and I’m in my office. I even have to go to my other offices for routine visits. My wife does not like socializing and neither do I. I think dining out with friends is just waste of time. Even going out for movie is stupid. But for change, I go once in two months. I go out to foreign trips for business only but alone as my wife doesn’t like that either.”

So, it seemed the work mould was getting filled up or rather over flowing and the cocoa beans were getting over burnt to make the chocolate taste too bitter to enjoy.

I don’t really want to get too critical for this richly-poor guy. Yes, he is enjoying his life in his own “sweet” way. He is looking at life with a different perspective unlike me. But my simple question to people like these is when you are on your death bed, would you ever think that did I miss anything in life or what I earned in life is all what I really wanted? For me, this seems be a mould slab which has just one pocket filled and rest all empty. So eventually, I’m not getting the value for the life I spent.

When I keep writing all this, a very strong question pops up in my mind that has mankind really found a holistic answer to the reason of his very existence? If I club all the different spheres and name it the real reason, am I getting close? Hmmm, you can ponder on this later.

A human has a tendency to forget that he or she would never take the materialistic thing along after death. The meaning of life is veiled under those colorful wrappers that you open, just to lick on to the mouth-watering multi-flavored, multi-shaped chocolates. They are in the form of reasonable amount to spend for you and your family while getting satisfaction in your professional work, keeping in touch with your friends, bringing up your children by spending quality time with them and providing them with best possible education and cultural values. There is so much effort behind all this that helps you to build the shape of life. This is like how big and tastier the chocolate is.

Getting back to our chocolate stall, a child visited and started pleading to his father for a piece of chocolate. The father snubbed him and harshly took him away. The child cried, sprawled on the ground and did every possible move but all in vain. I wondered that for a petty demand, if you can really thwart your child’s excitement? Have you forgotten that one day you would be old, weak and financially dependent? On the contrary, we you had smiled, handed him a piece and held his hand as you are with him forever, the child would have remembered this for years to come.

On reading this, you might have an argument to make that not everyone gets a satisfactory job or healthy family culture or even basic human needs. Well, the contradiction to this is simple. There are different qualities of chocolates available in stores. The point is how you enjoy, stay happy and live your life with full satisfaction.