15/08/2020
They say that challenges in life are just like spices in cooking, they add flavor to it.
I am awed how cooking amazingly resembles life. Well, both have processes, and I think that's the easiest resemblance to spot. But truth is, there's more with life and cooking that we could actually reflect on.
When we cook, especially when we prepare for it so much, like cooking for our favorite person, we always make sure to select the best possible ingredients. But when a certain ingredient we desire to complete our target dish is not available, we search for it and try our luck so much. But when it is too tiring to find what's unavailable, we resort to choosing the best possible and available alternative.
Just think of life, it is greatly like cooking. When we want to have the best life, we make sure to be surrounded by the best people we think we can have. We dream the most fantastic dreams in broad daylight. But when something is lacking, or someone's lost, we seek for that particular thing or person. Later on, when we surrender after a long chase of what went away, we find something or someone to take its place. We wish to fill the vacant seat. We try hard not to be incomplete.
And when we cook, we make sure to follow the procedures. Whether it's a from a cook book or from a tradition that we had memorized, we want to imitate the same steps. In rare cases, we experiment, but of course, even if we tell ourself that "it is okay to fail this try", at the back of our mind, we want the experiment to end up beautifully.
In life, people defy the processes that are traditionally followed, but for some, doing so means breaking the rules.
When one chooses to escape the path, like getting married too late, or engaging in a relationship too early, we think it is wrong.
When a child reasons out, despite having a good and logical point, the elders would always say that it's not right and is utterly disrespectful.
And when we experiment, like for instance try to succeed first in career before relationships, we always want a good end. We can, but we hate to comfort ourself in uncomfortable situations.
Both in cooking and in life, in spite of strictly following the procedures, we would always want a taste for confirmation. It is not lack of trust on the cook book, nor lack of faith to ourself when we do tase or test. It is plainly acceptance that 'tries' could go wrong, and the same processes don't always end alike.
The only significant distinction I want to point out, is the difference in both ends.
When a dish that's cooked very well through a painstaking process and ended up very tasty is served, we want to consume it all.
However, in life, when everything seems to go according to plans, like all the end of each line rhyme, and we achieve what we want with flying colors, we want the moments to just be still and never end.
Simply, not all endings are conclusions we want to avoid. Some endings are actually very delightful that we passionately seek them.
