Four Perspectives

I don't usually use food as a metaphor for decision making, which is ironic given how much of my social media presence revolves around it nowadays. For those of you who are familiar with my Vocal Media presence, you may know that I am fond of Trader Joe's Chili Spiced Dried Mango, to the point of framing my process of self-discovery during my teens and twenties in a story about it, which I have published here on Vocal Media.

The chili mango story means a bunch of things to me. On one level, it represents how my perspective on life shifted during my college years and early twenties, including how I saw certain aspects of my childhood, or being somewhere on the spectrum, and how that influenced the hopes and dreams I had for myself growing up. I had to confront my own demons telling me that I'd made the wrong choices, or that I wasn't worthy of the happiness that other people seemed to have. It's been a multi-year process of getting over that dark hole in my early twenties, and using this story as a metaphor for how my perspective on life has changed has helped me move forward from that. To me, no matter how much you may regret what's happened in the past, or how much you dislike having to choose between two (or more) flawed options, there's always a way forward even if you can't see it right now or don't know what the path will look like.

A couple years ago, I thought it would be a good idea to tell this story to prospective partners, since it'd be interesting to hear their thoughts on the story, and I figured it'd be a great way to get to know them better. (One of the college-era situations that prompted me to come up with this story was having an unrequited crush on someone while another person had a unrequited crush on me.) I value being able to have deep, thought-provoking conversations with my partner. I've told this story to 4 people that I've dated thus far, and while I'm no longer sure if it's a good way to vet or weed out prospective long-term partners, I'm intrigued by how everyone I've told my chili mango story to gave a different response.

For the sake of explaining the answers, I'll refer to these 4 individuals as Mikasa, Nezuko, Setsuna, and Kagari. Won't reveal anything too personal about them, but I will say that there are special reasons why I'm using these aliases. For example, I'd like to think that "Mikasa" would remember me telling her about watching Attack on Titan as the final seasons were coming out, or that "Nezuko" might remember introducing me to Demon Slayer since we watched a few episodes together.

Mikasa said she would instinctively pick the chili dried mango because it tasted better to the kid.

Nezuko said she would go with the raisins since they didn't make her physially sick even if they were bleh.

Setsuna said she would go with regular dried mango instead of chili dried mango. She gave a relatively drawn-out and wordy response, which I appreciated.

Kagari said she would alternate between the chili dried mango and the raisins on different days. She asked questions about how old the child was, and what their relationship with their parents was like.

It was really interesting to me how the latter two responses sought to find an alternative to the two options given, as I would've tried to do in this situation. I don't know if it's because I told the story differently later on, or if it was because I presented the story differently (or asked the story at different points in time), or if it reflected differences in how we connected with each other, or if it was just pure chance.

But in any case, what makes this story really compelling about is how the 4 responses I got to this story revealed that my protagonist didn't only have 3 options to pick the raisins, the chili dried mango, or something else entirely. He specifically also had the options to pick an option that was a blend of the positive attributes of both snacks, and he also had the option of alternating between the two, so he could still get the pluses of both without being exposed to the downsides of one all the time.

And this reflects how in life, we always have more possibilities open to us than we think, as long as we dare to dream and open ourselves to what life may bring us.