Bananas

One time an old man told me that he didn't buy green bananas anymore because he was ready to go to Heaven at any point. He was very old. 

However, some (younger) people like to buy their bananas green, and some like to buy them when they are yellow, and some people like to wait until they are a little freckly, because different people like their bananas at different levels of ripeness. And while a person may feel strongly about what level of ripeness is the best-tasting, they are not wrong or right. It is a matter of opinion, because it is a banana, and not a matter of moral law.

But what about when a banana gets past the freckly stage and is straight-up brown? The store doesn't even sell them when they are this overripe. Nobody eats bananas after they turn kind of squishy. People eat them earlier solely because they think brown bananas are gross and want to avoid having to have brown bananas in their mouth and/or home. I've started to feel like people are bananas, and I'm a brown one.

I am sitting on a shelf waiting for exciting life things to happen, but not a lot is and I'm generally fine with that until I realize that all my fellow banana friends are gone. My friends are doing exciting things and I am be-bopping along. I'm busy and I'm doing life, too, but if you were to ask me what's going on, I would say "nothing much," and it's been this way for a good long while now. I am jealous of people who have lots of exciting things going on.

Yesterday afternoon, I walked by the pantry in my apartment. I keep my food on the top left half-shelf and when I quite hungrily looked up there for a snack, I saw that I have two brown bananas on my half-shelf. And then I remembered that I need to make banana bread muffins soon.

Brown bananas are the only kind you can use for banana bread muffins. They're soft and turn into muffins so readily because they are easily squishable. That doesn't mean that people who are brown bananas are so apathetic and hopeless that they'll do anything; it means that they are willing to be turned into something better, even if it means that they themselves have to change (and change is scary). They lose their whole shape and color and turn into something better, something with chocolate chips. 

Green and yellow bananas are harder to squish. And I don't mean that they are bad or lazy or that brown bananas are superior, because they're not. They know different suffering than brown bananas. But I like them. They are cool and they are my friends.

But brown bananas aren't bad either. They can be taken from the half-shelf at the top left corner of the pantry and turned into something that no banana ever even knew was a possibility. And so I can say, with the potential of my life being turned into the life of a muffin, there is hope for me yet. 

Love,
Lauralicious