floating on an ocean of chocolate
Seldom will you come upon a topic, whether of great weight or little consequence, that will engender universal and complete agreement. Paradoxically, the one and only subject upon which there may be near total agreement is that disagreement can and will be expressed by someone on virtually anything and everything.
Life Sustaining Food
It is often the smallest, most trivial of matters that generate the most intractable of disagreements. There is an idiom often associated with this phenomenon which states that one cannot see the forest for the trees, indicating how we all too often get caught up in the minutia and lose sight of the bigger picture, the truly important stuff.
For example, should I suggest that the color of the text on this page is black someone will, with near certainty, offer that only some of the text is black because there happens to be a few characters in green. Indubitably another will subsequently respond that both statements are, in point of fact, incorrect, that most of the text is some shade of dark gray that merely looks black to the reader’s eye and that those characters that look green ought to be more accurately defined as some percentage or combination of the primary colors of red, green, and blue.
Meanwhile whatever message the writer intended to express has been completely lost or forgotten due simply to some trivial and completely unimportant disturbance in the force.
This malady appears to be inherent in our nature; it would seem that no one is truly immune although some may be better inoculated than others. Remaining focused on what is truly important is often difficult; the degree of difficulty inversely proportional to our susceptibility to be sidetracked or distracted. Let’s face it, it’s almost impossible to keep our “eyes on the prize” when we are floating on an ocean of chocolate!
Visualize for a moment an enormous table placed at one end of a large room, heaped high with mountains of the most nutritious, delectable life-sustaining foods imaginable. You are hungry and as you stand at the doorway opposite the table the aroma emanating from it is overwhelming and your mouth is salivating at just the thought of filling yourself with all that wonderful food. All you have to do to satisfy your hunger is walk across the room to that table, but…in order for you to reach that table you must first traverse the room and it is filled, floor to ceiling, with empty pleasures, delightful baubles, sweet candies, and intoxicating substances that will entice you with their irresistible temptations. You are fully aware that indulging in these enticements will instantly, though only for the briefest of moments, satisfy your hunger. You are equally aware that you cannot live for long on their vacant calories; their alluring song masks their true nature, a slow painful march toward starvation. Only the table across the room can provide you with what you need to live and it is a short walk if only you can keep your “eyes on the prize” and ignore all the distractions along the way.
Some might suggest that there is no such table in the room. How sad to think of life that way. I firmly hope that we can all agree on that.
