life’s hard + chocolate’s good

 

“Life’s just hard.”

She looked up across the table as the statement slipped out of her mouth, just a few small words, but a statement that carried so much weight and depth.

Naturally, I continued to devour my bar of dark chocolate, nodding in agreement with what she said.

Because life is just hard. Sometimes there’s not much else to do–there’s no way to solve any more problems–than to just nod in agreement and eat chocolate. Silence speaks volumes, especially when words can’t bandage up a wound.

But that’s also what makes it so worth it. I think that’s where the beauty of life lies, in the bittersweetness of it all.

The past few days I’ve been thinking about my life a year ago. I’m a deep reflector, one who thrives on shared memories and laughter and tight hugs wrapped around pain. Two days ago, I sat in Chick-fil-a for nearly five hours, laughing and talking about travel days and ceremonies in Swaziland. I remembered, yet again, the rich life I’d lived, the richness of cultures and experiences and conversations.

Life was hard then, and life is hard now too.

There’s far less opportunity to attend an African ceremony or to walk through a neighborhood and see a pet monkey on a leash, because here, I’m in my own culture and most people have domesticated pets. But I think that’s both the bitter and sweet of reflection.

I think bittersweet is similar to the tension between heaven and earth, the struggle between contentment and longing.

I think as humans, we–meaning me–try really hard to understand and fit ourselves into a categorized box of either organized or messy, right or wrong, bitter or sweet, when really we’re as jumbled and paradoxical as they come. Perhaps your life is great, and you love your job, and life is still just hard. Perhaps you miss a 15 minute moment of life that you wish outlasted the pain of walking away from it. Perhaps you have no reason to complain, but you still can’t shake the cold grip of depression.

I guess life’s just hard and beautiful, and bittersweet can’t be described in entirety unless it’s chocolate.

So sit in the silence and eat a square of the antioxidant goodness and remember the days of monkeys in Cambodia and office afternoons in America. Life’s just hard, but life’s also just good.