empty plates, empty hearts

When eating good food, I tend to rush through it. Often I find myself filling my mouth with another bite before I’ve even had the chance to swallow the last. I can’t help myself, when I taste something good I just want to eat it all.

But before I realize it, it’s all gone. Whether it’s a piece of rich chocolate cake or a delicious bowl of pasta, I always eat it so quickly that before my mind registers how savory it was I’m staring down at an empty plate. Disappointment always prevails, as we all know you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

When I think about it, it becomes clear that I do that with a lot of things. I always put a song I love on repeat till I can’t stand it anymore, visit a fabulous cafe till I’m sick of its menu, and spend every minute I can with that new someone special because I can’t get enough of their company.

And a lot of the time, that beginning spark of something special ends up fizzling, because when lighting a fire, you have to blow gently. If you blow too hard you just end up putting the fire straight out and are back to sitting alone in the cold.

When we meet someone new that interests us, our immediate reaction becomes that we want to see them constantly. We sneak out of the office for quick lunches with this Mr. X and push aside our regular routine to accommodate more dinners and coffees. We find ourselves writing things down in our agendas in pencil and not pen, because you never know when something might spring up and we’ll get another chance to spend a few more hours with Mr. X.

But soon you find that the interest fades, from one side or the other. Your phone either starts to ring too much for your liking or stops ringing at all, because the interest that was there was wiped clean in such a short time span. If you eat all the cookie dough before it goes in the oven, you never really get the chance to find out how good the cookies could have tasted. Sometimes it pays off more to wait patiently, pace yourself, and then you’ll get to settle down comfortably with a plate of warm biscuits.

Cheesy metaphors aside, I may sound like I’m advocating playing games or hard to get, but I’m not really. The only thing I’m pushing is the idea that you may not want to be that song that somebody grows sick of. Don’t put yourself on repeat.

They didn’t lie when they said you can’t have too much of a good thing. You literally can’t—if you’re not careful, it disappears before you know it.