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Ah, the new year is here. Isn’t it fabulous? Well, no. Hey, but it could be? Will it? Who knows! Since we grow up celebrating milestones such as this, it’s routinely the perfect time for reflection. Most of us presume this is a new beginning of sorts, time to turn over a new leaf as some may call it, including yours truly. Of course, this moment of reflection, which is also the likeliest of reasons that I decided to fiendishly share my opinion with you. Hence, I implore you to read on as I may have stumbled upon the grandest of observations that seeks to rework one of the many recycled life analogies. I present to you, “Life is like a pie”.
Wait? Wasn’t it “Life is like a box of chocolates” from my man, Forest? Yup, that was it but we’ll continue with this pie analogy, I literally thought about it way too much to not share it now! Anyways, so I sat there thinking about what defines me as a person and I found one thing to be the most logical conclusion and that it’s not who I want to be but who I choose to be that defines me. Sounds like instead of talking the talk, you’ve got to walk the walk, right? Or more sophisticatedly phrased as that it’s not what you intend to do but what you actually put into action that defines you. Wow, eerily similar to a line from Batman Begins (Spoiler Alert: I am Batman).
My personal interests, relationships with loved ones, career ambitions, religion/beliefs and culture are but only a few facets of what I use to define myself. You wouldn’t be amiss to notice that we also hold onto certain moments and experiences from the past to construct our outer armor which contributes to how we define ourselves. Basically, it can be a specific memory, a transformative experience or a specific era within your life. And here we are, finally! We have arrived at the motherload, the pie. Before we move on, quick side note, you’re probably wondering why I chose a “pie” as an analogy? Honestly, for two reasons, one, my day job involves a lot of accounting! And two, pie is fucking delicious! (You are not pie, cheesecake. Go back to the cake section).
Now that’s sorted, here are the rules of the pie of “Life”. The totality of aspects or facets that you use to define yourself is your “Pie of Life”. Each aspect is an individual slice. You can add a slice but never remove one because there’s no delete button in life. Even the smallest of slices may exist since every act, memory or experience will leave an impression on you, consciously or subconsciously. The size of an individual slice may change, and all slices needn’t be equal, but the pie is always whole which means you can choose to define yourself with a handful of things or a multitude of things and all may vary in importance. The size of our pie represents the factors out of our control such as the beginning and end of our lives. And the thickness of the pie represents how well we have cultivated our “Pie of Life”.
But wait, what about the crust you ask? In my case, it represents my immaculately sparkling personality that you are or will eventually compliment. I joke, chill! The crust represents the first impression we make on other people. Now there’s a delicious analogy that might help you visualize and plan your life better. It certainly helped me not only feel better about the time that has passed but the time to come as well. Sure, there will always be factors out of our control but what we can control is how important a particular slice is on its own and in relation to another slice to ourselves. We can also control how we want to bake it by being honest with ourselves and not being afraid to do the dirty work.
Honestly, after a year of constantly monitoring the news for pandemic updates, incompetent government responses and observing the sheer fucking chaos across the globe, I was still able to experience feelings like joy, sadness, inspiration, compassion and empathy. How do we reconcile everything? (Told you my day job involved a lot of accounting). We reconcile everything by choosing to be present in every moment, intentional in every action, accepting of each life detour, humble in every failure and never backing down in baking yourself a fucking mouthwatering-ly scrumptious Pie of Life!
[insert dirty joke of your choice here]