“3 flavours, 1 has to be fruit…”
"3 flavours, 1 has to be fruit." Said the dad to his young son.
"1 has to be fruit?"
"That's right. 3 flavours, 1 has to be fruit." Dad replied.
"And 1 sauce," said his encouraging mum.
"1 sauce?" said the boy in disbelief
“1 sauce." She confirmed.
"And the sauce can be 1 of the fruits!" She added.
"1 of the fruits? How can you do that? There are no fruit sauces." Said the boy, incredulous.
"What about strawberry? Strawberry is a fruit and a sauce," offered mum.
"Yuck, who wants strawberry as a sauce!" resolved the young boy.
I overheard this magical family interaction today, walking past a family on their way to someplace with passion and purpose. We giggled, sharing an organic, spontaneous moment of humanness, where strangers lives preciously intersect and meaningfully connect.
It was about frozen yoghurt to them. It meant something more to me.
Life is a lot like this.
We're given experiences with parameters. Boxes. Rules to follow and boundaries not to be crossed.
Three flavours, one has to be fruit, one sauce. Non-negotiable.
But here's what I witnessed in that moment, what the boy couldn't yet see: within every box lies infinite possibility. And even frozen yoghurt comes with conflicting choices to be made and difficult decisions to be determined.
His mum, saw what he couldn't. Strawberry isn't just a fruit. It's also a sauce. One thing serving two purposes. Gently coaching and coaxing him to see the choices within the possibilities and the options outside of the box he was being given.
But the boy? "Yuck, who wants strawberry as a sauce."
He dismissed it before he even tried it. Inadvertently limiting himself, putting himself in a box ready to throw away the key. Closed the door on possibility because it didn't fit his limited understanding of how things ‘should’ work.
How often do we do this? How many times do we say "yuck" to options we can't immediately align with, understand, or control? How many times do we tell ourselves there's no way through because we are fearful of what we may see if we look a little harder, a little deeper or don’t believe we’ll make it to the other side where we first threw the key?
The quality of our lives isn't determined by the boxes we're handed. It's shaped by how courageously, how openly, how curiously we explore our options within them. That is the wisdom to know the difference between what started as an empty box and we reframed to become a treasured gift.
Every day, we're handed our own version of "3 flavours, 1 has to be fruit."
The question isn't whether we like the box it comes in or will we adhere to the rules on the label. The question is: will we stay courageous and curious enough to discover that even strawberries have the potential to be both.
H2BH 004/365
