Where's The Sweetness?

Aaahh, February is the month of love and, as if on cue, many of us will take part in a deliberately unnecessary ritual to express our affections for one another with some sort of sweet representation i.e.-chocolate. Others will spend exorbitantly on needless trinkets that will no doubt lose their sparkle by next week’s minor infraction landing you in the proverbial doghouse for at least a week. We have become so used to showing love with food and rewarding achievements, both big and small, with irrelevant tchotchkes that deviating from this practice invokes rebuke of the highest order.

We reward our own good behavior with acts of culinary kindness because how else can we prove our immeasurable worth except by indulging in what we have identified as mostly undeserving. Why else would we celebrate “cheat days” while dieting and consume “legal” cheat foods on those days? Why do we say we are being “bad” when we eat dessert and “good” when we’ve eaten all our veggies? We devour birthday cake because well, birthday salad doesn’t have quite the same ring. We talk about craving sugar when we are tired and need more energy, when we are sad and need cheering up, when we are happy and need to celebrate, and when we are sick to make us feel better. In every case, it’s to get us to this illusive place for which there is no clear address. So, we wander aimlessly at times, hoping that this external sweetness will impart lasting joy in an otherwise mediocre existence only to go to bed, get up, and repeat it all the next day.

Lasting sweetness in life cannot be found in what we consume, it is found in who we are. Your gifts, talents, and skill sets will contribute so much more to the sweetness that you crave than any Krispy Kreme doughnut ever could. It’s in these unique offerings where you can become the change you want to see in the world around you. Life is pretty sweet when you are sharing your art with the world, doing your part to end hunger in your school, or funding the research that will one day cure cancer. If those goals are too lofty then how about finding sweetness in learning a new language, meeting the need of another, sharing a laugh with a friend, or chasing a sunset to see where it ends? The graphic above says it all- “It’s the sweet simple things of life which are the real ones after all”. So, friend, where’s the sweetness in your life? I bet it’s where you least expect it to be.

©Tasha D. Manigo-Bizzell