Pass the Salt

A few years ago I switched to natural peanut butter. It was not an easy transition because, at first, I found it dry and flavourless. In our culture, we rely very heavily on salt. Far too often, instead of noticing the natural flavours of food we are only interested in tasting the salt.

Love, is a lot like that. We have become so dependent on the fantasy that we’ve lost the taste for the real thing. Have we let our fantasy of love drown out the real experience? Is that what we’re really mourning when we end a relationship? Are we mourning the loss of the other person or are we mourning the loss of the fantasy we have built in our heads?

Lately, I have this nagging doubt that I have thrown away something special simply because it wasn’t quite living up to the fantasy. But why does love have to follow the prescribed path that society has chosen? We generalize about human behaviour and read meanings into certain actions – or lack of action – which may not be based in any truth. We can never truly know another person, so why do we presume to think that we know what their actions mean? Every relationship, like the people who create it, is unique. By judging our relationships on generalizations, are we limiting ourselves to a stunted experience? Are we once again we depending on the salt for the flavour instead of the reality?

I don’t advocate a total elimination of salt from your life. In fact, the human body needs a certain amount to survive. A little salt can serve to enhance the natural flavour but too much drowns it out completely. I’ve learned to like the taste of the natural peanut butter but sometimes I still need to add a pinch of salt. I hope that I can learn to better appreciate the natural flavours of love but I think it’s human nature to need a little fantasy once in a while.