A Sweet Fruit

In a conversation about life, Dalai Lama says:

“Take the example of a person who likes to eat sweet things, but doesn’t like sour things. Then there is a certain kind of fruit that this person enjoys. That fruit may be mostly sweet, but it may also have a little bit of sourness in it. That person continues to enjoy the fruit, they don’t stop eating it because it has a little sour taste. If they want to continue to enjoy eating that fruit, they have to accept the little bit of sourness in it. You can’t separate the sweet from the sour in that piece of fruit, it is always going to be mixed”.

(quoted from a book titled “The Art of Happiness At Work” by His Holiness The Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D)

I, too, like to eat sweet things and don’t like sour things. And the Dalai Lama was right, as a big fan of “Mangga Harumanis” (a type of mango from Indonesia), I would continue eating the mango even though sometimes it has a little bit of sourness in it.
As for life, I always wanted my life to be perfect and smooth. (hey, who doesn’t want it?). Unfortunately, just like the “Mangga Harumanis“, even though 80% of them are sweet, there is still 20% of sourness in them, in which, I just have to swallow it.

A chat with my friend on Saturday night at a cozy lounge in Singapore reminded me that life can be really sour. And when it turns sour, can we say, “No, I don’t want to taste it“? I wish it can be that simple. As simple as I said NO to dark chocolate (yes, even though I have a sweet tooth, dark chocolate isn’t sweet enough – for me).
Well, I think, sometimes we have the choice and the priviledge to say NO, but in some cases, unfortunately, we don’t. And this is when we just have to swallow the sourness of the fruit.
C’est la vie… that’s life… it comes in one package: sweet and sour :).

And the same thing applies for human being. It comes in one package: all the positive sides and a bit of ‘malfunction‘ here and there. Nobody’s perfect. Just like our life. Can’t expect life to be as smooth as a Thai silk… so can’t a human being be…