Worth the Effort

You think should be easy, but they aren't. Even something as seemingly simple as a vacation can be exceptionally complicated. There's travel issues, like spending 180 minutes in a Days Inn in Dublin, Georgia, which was 179 minutes too long. There are family issues, such as an unneeded drama between siblings that drags in my wonderful girlfriend. There is the frequent social ineptness of family members, such as a mother who wants to talk about nothing but my ex to my girlfriend - not exactly a way to engender a feeling of togetherness or connectedness. Suddenly what is supposed to be relaxing becomes fraught with drama and emotion. Not exactly the way you envisioned things going.

But somehow life is always like that.

Life is hard. Challenges are waiting for you every day when you wake up, and they're still lurking under the bed when you drift off to sleep. But that doesn't mean life is like a box of chocolates. Rather, it's like this:

A mango.

One of the most time-consuming pieces of fruit to eat. The peeling process is a pain in the ass, and it usually takes at least a minute, if not two, to successfully strip it of its rubbery shell. When you do, it's often overly juicy, which makes it hard to hold onto during those final swipes of your peeler. I have had more than one mango squirt out of my grasp into the garbage can below. Nothing that a little water can't solve.

Then you have to cut the mango. It never cuts very easily. When you see the Mexican fruit vendors do it, you start to suspect they might be using lightsabers rather than knives - it's never been that easy for me. You usually get a decent amount of fruit from two sides, but then you hone in on the others, and the whole thing kind of collapses around you, juice dribbling off the cutting board, yielding few treasures. You start to wonder why you bother. A banana's sitting over there, and by now it would've been eaten.

Then the mango's cut, but you're a pulpy, juicy mess, and you still need to get it all into a bowl. Do you wash your hands before grabbing a bowl, knowing that you'll get the bowl sticky? Or do you take the time to wash your hands and then fill up the bowl with that orange-yellow goodness? You choose the latter, but then you're inevitably going to get messy again, swiping the fruit into the bowl with the knife that's covered in goo. Then, if you want the mango to be really perfect, you need to put the whole thing into the fridge for awhile - chilled is better than room temperature.

Goddamn, getting to eat a fucking mango is a giant pain in my ass.

While it's already a piss-poor analogy, life is similar to the the preparation of a mango - it's filled with all the preparation, all the mind-numbing details you don't want to deal with, challenges that you don't anticipate when you first start, and there's frequently a sense of delayed gratification.

But then you eat it. And holy shit, all of the effort that goes into it is forgotten. It's all worth it. Because that mango is filled with flavor, texture. It warms everything about you, and makes any meal that you're eating all the more enjoyable.

And when you share that mango with the person that you adore, who you love in ways you can't even describe, it's the difference between just eating the mango, and savoring it. The challenges that got through to reach that point still exist, and they're still there, but they seem negligible, and they don't detract from the pleasure of that mango. Because you're eating it together. You both understand what it means to have gotten to that point, and to be in that place. Even if some of the mango juice dribbles down your chin.