# 18 Sometimes carrots have a really terrible taste.

Sometimes carrots have a really terrible taste. When you bite into a carrot, you expect it to taste like a carrot. Right? How do you begin to even describe the taste of a carrot? One sort of already knows what a carrot should taste like. I would describe it as a crunchy wet plant. A carrot is never meant to taste anything other than a crunchy wet plant. So when you’re forced to live a reality where the expectation of a crunchy wet plant is destroyed with an awful-crunchy-gone bad-tastes like bad milk-carrot you have to say something. That’s right. I had a carrot that dismantled every expectation I have had of a carrot. It was shattered. I don’t know if this is where that saying about “shame on me” comes in, but it really felt like it. Shame on me for having such an expectation for a carrot. Or am I upsetting myself because I assumed that every carrot would taste the same.

So much emotion and turmoil in this single experience that it brought me to write this.

Is this more of those universal lessons where we have to let go of what we think we know?

I see it as also the universe’s fault because as a human I rely on patterns. For all twenty eight years of my life, thus far, I have had a crunchy wet plant tasting carrot. The linear carrot. Nothing else. Therefore, I feel strong in saying that expecting a crunchy wet plant is not out of line? The probability is there. I am more likely to have a good tasting carrot.

Is this making sense to you? Am I being privileged by complaining of a bad tasting carrot? Is this my prerogative ? Or am I being upset for no reason? Patterns matter. Patterns are symbolic. Patterns are the language of the universe. I feel deceived.

I think this is a lesson on relinquishing all that you know or what you think you know. Or if I may…. “All we know is that we know nothing”.

Maybe I am the one changing and not the carrot. Maybe it’s my taste buds that have changed. Do you see all these possibilities? Do you comprehend the possibility of anything? The outliers that exist.

What am I to do with this? Could it be that the carrots and I both have changed. The one carrot and the one Paula. It would all seem too coincidental if so. Perhaps I am looking for meaning when there is none. Perhaps it’s just simply a bad carrot. Simple as that.

I feel called to tell you that change is hard, but there is nothing more constant than change, and that’s a pattern that I can count on.