Why Philosophy Might Not Make Red Apples Taste Better

Reclaiming your future with lessons from the grocery store.

Oh, hi friends! Thanks for stopping by!

Did you think I’d disappeared?

Nahh, just busy moving across the country and working on da’ memoir (and my taxes, but we will not speak of that.)

But now that we are here together, I have something for you to ponder.

Ponder This, Plato

~~~~~ GROCERIES ~~~~~

(Betcha’ didn’t see that coming.)

Seriously though (well, sorta’ seriously), consider the last grocery shopping trip that you (or your roommate, or your partner, or DoorDash, or whoever) took.

Good job. Ok, imagine all of those groceries spread out on a table in front of you.

(Stop worrying, no one else can see this except you. And even if they could they don’t care about your Cheetos.)

Now scooch over while I butt into your imagination for a sec’ (go on, scooch!) because you need to know that amongst all of those groceries… sits a small bag of red apples.

I love how terrible these AI generated images are. This one is like the apples-in-a-bag version of AI generated hands.

Your assignment is to ponder some questions about these red apples.

The questions:

Why did you buy this small bag of red apples? And why, on this particular shopping trip?

After you have satisfactorily pondered… we will explore, together, a few possible scenarios that could have led to the selection of those red apples on that particular shopping trip.

The Scenarios

Scenario 1:

The Healthy Eater

~ You had ‘snack foods’ on your grocery list. While you were at the store you remembered that you want to try to eat more healthy. Your family didn’t eat very healthy in the home you grew up in so you have a limited number of ideas of what you might buy that would be considered a healthy snack, but fruit seems like an obvious option. You wander to the produce section and see some fruit, but it looks like it will spoil quickly, so you avoid that kind. Other fruits look tasty, but they are too expensive for your current budget, especially since you aren’t 100% sure this fruit will ever get eaten, you avoid those too. Still other fruit options are completely unfamiliar and you aren’t entirely sure how to eat them, or even how to cut them, you decide to pass on those. Red and green apples are available and seem like a good, familiar, affordable choice. A few of the green apples have brown spots on them which for whatever reason makes you recall a few times when you ate some green apples that were too tart and so almost without thinking you reach for the red apples instead. ~

You toss a few red apples in your grocery bag.

Scenario 2:

The Busy Parent

~ You have a child in third grade. Your child brings home a note that says they are doing a class activity that requires a number of supplies. Your child drew a small slip of paper out of a hat with the words ‘Red apples’ on it, which means your child is now responsible to bring in red apples for the activity. Your child told you about the red apple need, so while you are out taking care of your personal grocery shopping you grab some red apples for the school activity and figure that you may as well grab some extra apples to be eaten at home while you’re at it. ~

You toss a few red apples in your grocery bag.

Scenario 3

The Apple Lover

~ You had a red apple tree in your yard when you were a child. You love red apples. You’ve eaten all of the red apples from your last shopping trip. You go to the store to buy some more red apples. ~

You toss a few red apples in your grocery bag.

Uh, ok?

I know what you’re thinking.

“Hmmm, interesting scenarios

Rose G.

, but, uh, WTF are we talking about again?”

Groceries, and apples. Red Apples. (Sheesh…)

Please pay attention.

AI apparently heard me talking shit about poorly generated hands, and poorly generated some hands for me. Along with some philosophical apples.

This Part Is About You

We often sum up parts, roles, or chapters, of our lives with simple descriptors:

“I’m a parent/not a parent.”

“I’m an engineer/cook/writer/singer/manager/IT specialist/etc.”

“I was a good student.”

“I studied medicine/technology/fine arts/philosophy(!)/etc. in school.”

“I played soccer/baseball/swimming/reading in high school/college.”

Here’s the cool part. Every chapter in your life is a lot like that bag of red apples.

Fruity F-ilosophy, Continued

Did you notice how the internal and external factors that led to buying the apples were completely different in each scenario, yet the end result of all of the scenarios was exactly the same?

“You toss a few red apples in your grocery bag.”

The Healthy Eater, The Busy Parent, and The Apple Lover were in some cases highly influenced by a resource limitation, by past experiences, or by an immediate need or someone else’s immediate need. In other cases they were most influenced by chance, or by convenience, or by ignorance. Some were guided more by moving away from things they didn’t want than by moving towards things they did want.

See, here’s the thing. Most of the time, we focus on what we have or what we do. We notice the our part, our role, the makeup of the chapters of our lives. Those are our red apples.

What if, instead, we focused on discovering how or why we ended up with these particular roles? On how or why the scenes and plot of our lives have come together to create our particular chapters?

And what if we studied these how’s and why’s with the expectation of being able to discern… whether we actually even like these parts, roles, and chapters? Whether we intended to write our stories the way they are currently written? Whether, even with all the limitations and blockers that come with being human, we have more control over the chapters of our lives than we ever dared to believe?

The shoppers from all three scenarios have the same shiny, red apples now. But the secret is… neither The Healthy Eater nor The Busy Parent even like red apples.

The Healthy Eater and The Busy Parent both ended up with a food that they find bitter, dry, unsatisfying. Still, they went to all the trouble to buy the apples and bring them home, so chances are they will eat them regardless of how they feel about them.

They might even get lucky and end up with a red apple that tastes a teensy bit better than usual and they may start thinking they kinda like red apples after all.

And if that happens, hell, they might even completely forget about all the other alternatives that exist.

The Apple Lover ended up with the exact same type of red apples as the other two. Yet, to The Apple Lover, the red apples are sweet, juicy, delicious.

This is About Your Future, Not Your Past

As we begin to understand the honest-to-god-true-complex reasons for why the pieces of our lives look the way they do, we begin to see that even if we were, say, The Healthy Eater… we don’t have to buy the red apples.

• We could wander back and buy that fruit we were afraid of because we didn’t know how to cut it or eat it.

• We could ask a friend to borrow a few bucks so we can try out the more expensive fruit and decide if we’d like to put our efforts towards being able to buy that fruit in the future.

• We could study to learn some new ideas for creative healthy snacks that aren’t even related to fruit at all.

• We can pause when we are reminded of those few times that green apples were way too tart, and instead of impulsively reaching for the red apples… we can focus on all the other times we enjoyed tasty, green apples, and reach for those instead.

Or…

• We can understand how we ended up with red apples in the first place, and acknowledge that they aren’t our favorites. But we still have the option to conclude that because of the affordability and vitamin content of red apples - that we are satisfied with their benefits enough to continue eating them anyways. And that is ok too.

The Juicy Truth

Guess what?

Things don’t have to stay the same.

The complicated mess of factors that got you where you are today, and the complicated mess of factors that will continue to annoy you and limit you and influence you as long as you are human - they aren’t going away.

But those complicated messes, those factors we have no control over, those small decisions we make again and again that don’t align with what we want or how we’d like to spend our time on this planet… they provide just as many opportunities for doing something different in the future as they do for guiding you to buy the same stupid red apple.

No matter where you are in your story, and no matter how many times you bought the red apples in the past… your future shopping bag isn’t full yet.

The life, the role, the chapter that comes right after TODAY, isn’t written yet.

Look at those yummy green apples. Photo by Anna Zakharova on Unsplash

Much love,

Rose 🌹

Do you think you have a habit of buying “red apples” when you don’t even like them all that much?

What might you like to “buy” instead in the future?

Would you like to encourage me to stop generating terrible AI images? ^😘🍎