In The Lunchbox Of Life

In The Lunchbox of Life…
By: Adam Epstein
12/29/06

In the lunchbox of life, we are all either food, an accessory (put there to help someone eat food), or a Hungry bastard who eats from the lunchbox.  Most of us are already packed into this lunchbox right when we are born and we cannot ever overstep our boundaries.  The Hungry ones will always eat us.  Now this may seem quite harsh, and it may seem to you that throughout history this has been a thoroughly disproved theorem, with men and women stepping over racial boundaries and women overcoming gender boundaries, but unfortunately, we are all still either food or accessory in one way or another.

It is considerably different to be an accessory in the lunchbox of life than to be a food.  My son is pear.  He’s rather heavy around the waist and lacking volume in the noggin.  Every day he comes home from school to tell me that some kids took his lunch money, or they gave him a wedgie, or both.  The bullies who pick on him are in their minds rightfully eating their “lunch,” which may be fine, because they can.

Me?  I’m a therapist.  The Hungry clean themselves of their filth after eating from the lunchbox by telling me what “bothers” them.  They wipe off their faces with my time, and I tell them how to stay cleaner next time for a non-reasonable fee.  I like to think of my profession as a smart way to make money off of hunger.  I’m a napkin.  They wipe off their mouths all they want on me but they keep on eating.

The reason why a turkey sandwich can’t be anything besides a turkey sandwich is because it doesn’t know that it has the choice to be an apple, or even a Yoo-hoo.  Not only is it not aware of its choice, but it wouldn’t know how to become something different if it wanted to.  It is stuck.  This is not much different from humans. We are not aware of the choices that we have and if we were, we wouldn’t know what they meant.

I am a napkin, and I cannot be a pear like my son because I do not know how to be like a pear, and if I did I wouldn’t know why I should become one and I would be bound by the fact that I know that I’m a good napkin.  In the same respect, I cannot become someone who consumes everything because I would not know how and if I learned, I would see no benefit in being so fat and I would be bound by the fact that I’m a good napkin.  We are good at being what we are because it is natural to be ourselves.

In such a lunchbox, the food is fuel for more important things, and the thermoses and napkins and forks and knives are used to make things happen more efficiently.  Maybe it’s time we realized that the consuming, the ones who use others for their benefit, are the ones who see outside the box and know that most people have the single purpose of being the mouth, being the spoon or being the sauce.