Everything is much more than what it seems

Nothing is what it seems because it is so much more. Even the simplest of things are deeper and more profound than we’re able to see. We don’t like what we like just because we like it and we never hate what we hate just because we hate it.

One of my favourite candies ever is Alpenliebe’s strawberry lollipop. I bring it to work to eat after lunch every day and it makes at least my afternoon, if not my day, but there’s nothing great about it. I realised I only like it because it reminds me of the candy the air hostesses used to give out before my favourite flight took off. It was a flight to London, my favourite place in the world, that my mother, brother and I would take once a year. We’d go for a month from April to May and it was the happiest time of the year. I’d eat the little Alpenlibe candy and know that all I need to do was watch two movies, eat my ‘non-veg’ meal, take a solid nap, and I’d wake up in the greatest place on earth. I’d spend a month hanging out with my little cousins that are irritating now, I’d make my mom buy me £100 worth of toys at the Hamleys store that was so big that it felt like it was its own country, we’d go for musicals, to museums and strawberry picking and all I had to do was sit and wait to get there.

This ₹5 lollipop version of that candy is a little post-lunch holiday in my head. I am a 6-year-old in a plane seat waiting for the flight to take off so I can start watching my first movie. I am re-living vicariously through my lollipop and my love for it has nothing at all to do with the lollipop itself.

This is a fun story to tell because the older I get the more I realise that almost everything in life is not what it seems to be about. It’s deeper, more complicated and it probably has something to do with someone’s childhood. We love and relate to things because of the memories attached to them, so the older you are the more you find yourself loving and hating based on what used to be. New ideas are constantly triggering and bringing to the surface old ideas in you that you are conditioned to like or dislike. I realise it’s corny but I will say it anyway — I want to tell you to look within yourself. Not for any other reason but because there is much more to you than you know. So much that has been learned and unlearned without you knowing. So much that you love and hate for reasons you don’t yet understand. So much left for you to see for yourself.