The Truth about Dark Chocolate

The Truth about Dark Chocolate
 
Sometimes awareness of the truth comes from unusual places. For most children, myself included, understanding the world and truth came from Chocolate! Yep, you heard that right. The realization that there is a difference between Milk Chocolate and Dark Chocolate is a day of epiphany that one does not forget. Milk Chocolate, creamy, delicious, and sweet! And then, one day, an adult offers you Dark Chocolate. The sick and twisted, smiling adult hands it to your young hands, knowing the outcome. You bite into it and discover it tastes like sadness mixed with dirt. Your young face twists into a grimace, and the “grown-ups” in the room roar with laughter. Instead of sympathy, you get once trusted adults, now quite pleased with themselves that they have done something to you that was done to them. You feel betrayed, but eventually get that there were some messages in that lesson. First, not all adults can be trusted, second, it might be best to say no to yourself, because although some things look desirable, it isn’t always so, and third, sometimes life tastes like dirt.  

You’re on a learning curve now. Years later you learn that those pesky credit card companies that  seem to have your best interest at heart, “get the credit you deserve,” really don’t. And, like that first bite into dark chocolate, you realize you have been lied to and think, “hey wait a minute, who deserves debt?” You walk away. Feeling pretty proud of yourself for not accepting that shiny new credit card, you go home and tell Grandpa that your mama didn’t raise no fool!  Gramps praises your wisdom, the mark of a true adult, self-denial for a better life. “Boy they can’t fool us,” he boasts! “Back in my day, they had these guys called Snake Oil Salesmen, they were fellas who promoted and sold some valueless or fraudulent cure for every ailment you could think of! Nope, I never bought me any of that stuff! Gramps was a wise man! And somewhere on your journey of discovery, you begin to figure out that this economy in dishonesty goes back a long way.

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay a tenth of mint, dill, and cumin, and yet you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy, and faithfulness." Matthew, 23:23

Then comes that day you have been dreading, when your own sweet, tiny cherub, with big sparkling eyes, gazes up at you as you eat your Dark Chocolate, while sitting on the sofa together. Her expression of pure innocence wanting you to give her some. Do you tell her? Or play on her what was done to you? Hmmmmm…Oh the dilemma, it sure would be funny, but she flashes you a smile that rivals a thousand suns, and decide to be honest and tell her that …  Sometimes life is filled with sweetness and then sometimes it comes with sadness and tastes like dirt, but in the end Dark Chocolate does carry lessons can be good for you.