Chicken or Fish?
The other day at the Vietnamese: I wanted to order a green curry with beef. Sometimes I need that red meat fix and already I was looking forward to the green beef curry for lunch all morning at work. When I went to order this, the Vietnamese chef said to me, “Sorry, beef is out. There is chicken or fish.” NO! But I wanted beef. Bitterly disappointed, I took the chicken instead. It wasn’t bad at all.
Bitterly disappointed, I took the chicken instead.
It wasn’t bad at all.
What does this say about our lives, our relationships and the options they hold for us? We often think to ourselves, “I wish my partner was more romantic” or “I’d love to have this sofa, but only in red” or “I love my job, if only it were closer to my home”, or, or, or.
But those options don’t exist. Today there’s chicken or there’s fish. The options that exist are to take chicken or fish or neither.
In the same way, there is your partner as they are. This is what’s on offer today. There is the partner who puts the kids to bed at night, buys me my favorite juice, or gives me a vegetarian cookbook for Christmas. He will never shower me with roses or take out the organic waste. So there is him or there is someone else or there is no one.
There’s this sofa in gray or there’s another one in red. And there’s this job where I have to drive half an hour every day or there’s a closer one but it pays less.
We sometimes spend a lot of time thinking about options that do not exist. Wishes that will never come true and are beyond our control. In doing so, we unintentionally opt to spend our time arguing with reality (and never have lunch). We miss out on what is on offer, and that may not be a bad option. Sometimes it can even be great.
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