Humans 101
Find Your Watermelon.
The secret to experiencing joy is learning how to notice it.
In a vacuum, I don’t really like watermelon all that much. I mean, if I’m just sitting in this vacuum, devoid of context, at a neutral temperature and with no one around, and a robotic hand is placing foods into my mouth and having me rank them, one to ten, I would probably give watermelon a five. The pros of watermelons are: they’re sweet, they’re juicy, they’re pink, they smell fresh, they’re easy to cut. The cons are: after one piece, they start to be TOO sweet; they’re sticky; they are a melon, which I like in theory but not in practice; and they’re really too big to eat alone.
I guess that last point could be a pro, too. Not if you’re in a vacuum, but in real life, with all its contexts.
If you definitely hate watermelon, and you’ve already read this far, (1) thank you, and (2) I’ll tell you right now that watermelon is actually sort of a metaphor — or more accurately, a word that I’m using to mean something else. You know how sometimes you can read about God and if you swap the word God for something else (humanity, love, The Great Mystery) the reading works better for you? (Or vice versa: maybe you read “love” and the word “God” works better.) “Watermelon,” for the next 2,128 words, will mean watermelon…
