Saturday, August 13, 2016

Soup

People are complicated.

Everyone is. Not just me. Not just you. Not just some people. All people. Everyone.

I struggled for the longest time thinking complicated meant bad. It doesn't. Or at least, it doesn't have to.

It just means soup.

I guess that sounds strange, but I was struggling hard to think of a way to explain this the other day and the only thing that I could think of was soup.

The broth is you. Your essence. What makes you tick. What gets you out of bed in the morning. What makes you, well, you.

Whatever floats in that broth is your life experiences.

Some of us are chunky. We've had some things and some stuff. We've been heated and reheated some more. It's okay. We're still soup. We still sustain. We are just more interesting. There's more to us. We're more complex. Little bits and pieces here and there and it's all just a mix of everything we've done, everywhere we've been, and everything and everyone that has been a part of us.

Some of us are tomato. Smooth. Not so complicated. There's still something there, it's just different. Not heart-stopping, not amazing and mind blowing, but good, solid, steady, and valuable.

Either way, it's all just soup. Some people want chunky and some people want tomato. There's both good even though they are different.

Not everyone has had the life I've had and I say with 100 percent certainty that that is totally okay. I have not had the life other people have had either and although sometimes I envy the things others appear to have, I would not want their lives and I'll bet they wouldn't want mine either.

It always amazes me when people say, "Why would she do this? When I was her age I did, XYZ!" when the fact is that when you were that person's age? You had a totally different life. I tell myself this all the time, every day, as I try to navigate parenting adults. I used to think I was a pretty good parent and now? I'm amazed every single day at the number of things I don't know and the number of things I have to learn in order to get through these years.

My daughter isn't me. She's not even close to me and she's very, very far away from what I was when I was eighteen years old. Sometimes I catch myself thinking, "Why isn't she doing this? Why is she doing that?"

She's not me. She had different experiences than me. She's had a different life than me. She makes different choices than me.

Not bad. Different.You can't expect chicken broth and vegetable soup to taste the same.

The good thing is they are both delicious.

1 comment:

Bethany said...

I read this in the voice of the father from My Big, Fat, Geek Wedding. It seemed fitting.