How can you like what is unlikeable?

 

I remember many years ago, someone cooked a sweet dish that I really didn’t like. In fact, it was horrible for my taste - and for a friend’s too. As he used to work in a food company, he immediately knew what to do: lots of chocolate over it! At last, we could eat it.
Many aspects of our lives seem to require lots of chocolate just to be livable.

Because the tendency is this: when we face something we don’t like, someone who doesn’t agree with us, or situations that are clearly not working as they “should”, we instinctively think that should change. The other person. The circumstances. Reality itself.

And yet, very often, that wish is unrealistic.

The reality is rather uncomfortable: we truly have control over just one thing in the whole universe - ourselves. And even that comes with effort, strength and a good dose of humility.

From an Eastern perspective, something quite radical is suggested: instead of fighting life, we endeavor to embrace it as it is. Not as resignation, but as clarity that is born from resilience. Seeing things clearly, without denial and an unnecessary drama.

If possible, of course, change the ingredients, adding a bit more of “chocolate” in whatever you are living. If needed, prepare for the future, taking some chocolate with you, just in case.

And always, cultivate flexibility - internally and externally - so that agreements, adjustments and new perspectives can emerge.

Sometimes there is no chocolate to pour on top. Sometimes the dish stays bitter. But the invitation from life is not to like everything, but to stop rejecting it so fiercely. To notice what is happening inside us. To soften. To learn. To grow.

Maybe liking the unlikeable is not about changing the taste of life, but about changing the way we meet it.