Is it "All You Can Eat" or "Can You Eat All" ?

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest human battle ever and to never stop fighting.

~ e.e. cummings



I went to an all you can eat buffet the other day. Yep. Me.
Hard to believe I know. I usually stay away from places that serve their food in a style very similar to a feeding trough but call me wild and crazy and unpredictable. Anyway, I'm standing there at the salad area looking at probably a dozen different salad selections and an area adjacent to that with rows upon rows of just vegis to build your own if one of the pre-fixed doesn't happen to suit you. Then I meander to the "meat section" and then the "bread section" slowly ambling toward the "sides and cooked vegetables". I have on my plate after all this walking, exactly three broccoli crowns, a slice of roast beef and a small spoonful of steamed green beans. I'm standing there looking dazed and confused and thinking, "this is just so much food!". So, I'm watching people, they're almost vicious. It was like a toy store I went to on Christmas Eve several years ago, two grown-ups actually came to blows over the last Barbie Palace. People at this resturaunt were stepping in front of others to go first and grabbing at the food like they hadn't eaten in a week! People! Seriously!
I make my way through the mob that's salivating over the ham and sit down looking at my plate. The very attractive guy sitting next to me is gobbling. Yep, that's right, a grown man is gobbling like there's no tommorrow. He's got his plate loaded like he's at a church pot luck. Sighing, I say, "I can't believe you are going to spend eight dollars on my lunch."
He stops and looks up at me. "Is that all your having?" He's a little incredulous at this point. "It's a buffet!" he says. "You can eat ALL you want!"

Okay so, side note here, I prefer in my dinning experiences QUALITY over QUANTITY.

"I really don't want that much, it's not healthy. Besides it isn't even very good food to begin with." I replied.
Shaking his head and looking somewhat condescending he says, "You're so high maintainance sometimes." Needless to say this comment makes me indignant, so I won't share with you the rest of the conversation, but you can use your imagination to fill in the gaps...

This whole thing actually triggered a different line of thinking. It got me to thinking about people. In general.
One of the things I've noticed in my short but multi-faceted life experience is that people have the hardest times accepting themselves and giving others permission to do the same. Myself included. So, when I came across this quotation from E.E. Cummings, I took pause.
The world is like a buffet. Not everything is attractive to everybody, but, it is attractive to somebody. And, just because something is attractive to you doesn't necesarily mean you will indulge yourself in that particular thing. The variety, however, is stimulating because there are so many different things to choose from. Friendships and aquaintances are much the same. There are people whith whom we could spend and eternity, and then there are those that we only take out when we absolutely have to. The thing I seem to find most people struggling with is trying to change so that they can be liked by a broader group dynamic. In fact, humans struggle constanly with the desire to be just like everyone else. We can call it "normal" or "fitting in" but the bottom line is we seem to not feel accepted unless we can readily identify something in ourselves with that same thing in someone else.

Am I losing you?

In our search for identity and individuality what we are really saying is, "I want people to like me just as I am!" Then, most of the time when the end result is achieved, we ourselves feel so uncomfortable we tweek and re-write untill we are more identifiable with the common, average soul walking the planet. Why do we do this to ourselves? More importantly, why do we do it to others? It's so difficult just finding yourself in the first place why do we constantly place ourselves in situations of self-doubt?

What am I really saying?

You know, it makes sense in my head. I guess what I'm thinking is that just because I personally HATE ham and I choose NOT to eat bread, doesn't mean that they don't add a whole lot to the overall experience for many others. It also doesn't mean that if they are being served I have to pretend like I like them.



"So, you be you...

And I'll be me...

and there's no blue food."


George Carlin