You Gotta Take a Chance

There you are at your local grocery store, standing in front of an intricate pyramid pile of crated clementines, longing for a natural dosage of vitamin C in the middle of winter. You close your eyes and can already taste the juicy goodness the package promises: "SWEET" - must be, it says it right on the crate! But you know better, now don't you? You know that even if you picked a good box the last time, this time you may not be so lucky. You make your selection, you put it back. You're as indecisive as a Taylor Swift song. You choose another box, prying your fingers through the mesh squeezing the deliberately placed clementines on top to ensure firmness. Ooo, too soft. Ooo, too hard. After about 3 crates have passed through your hands and the citrus doesn't sue you for sexual harrassment, you finally choose THE ONE! The one you will take home, the one in which you have so much hope in to be sweetly enjoyed.

Sometimes you choose wisely and the promised sweetness delivers. Sometimes you have regret and determine the promises are falling just a bit short of meeting your expectations. And sometimes, you find a couple rotten clementines hidden in the bottom of the crate, unnoticed by you under the glamour lighting at the store. Isn't this a lot like life? 

We can end up with a crate that holds just what we expected, or falls short of what we expected, or is absolutely inedible and we were tricked into buying it. It really doesn't matter, because when we're done with that crate, we'll find ourselves in the store once again, forced to choose another crate, blindly and without all the facts we wish we had. But, choose we will. Why? It's because the chance, the possibility, that this one DOES end up being sweet and delicious.

No matter what crate you end up with, know that you won't be eating the fruit it contains forever, no matter what it gives, and that you'll always be faced, once again, into making the choice. There's no sweetness guarantee. The only guarantee is that you'll find yourself in a position to choose again. Who knows, maybe you'll even choose to switch to apples?