Chocolate Tasting

Preface: As a freshmen mentor, I go to my students’ class about once a week. This week, I picked a great day to attend. Not just because the professor (who is brilliant) gave everyone a square of Amano chocolate, but because I had a fantastic talk with life during the class too (not aloud of course; I’ve learned my lesson there). Anyways, my students are working on a “Great Works” response, which is a reaction to some great piece of art, literature, or drama, but they didn’t really understand how to do that.

So what is the solution to this misunderstanding?

Eating chocolate!

Correction: Tasting chocolate.

Which is completely different. If you don’t know the difference right now, you’ll soon know.

Chocolate tasting is an art like wine tasting; it takes considerable effort, time, and precision to make valid judgments. The students read a chocolate tasting guide (found at https://www.amanochocolate.com/articles/tasting-guide.html) and then their professor gave everyone a piece of expensive, fine chocolate. Not to eat, mind you. But to taste. To smell, touch, and examine, followed by letting it melt meticulously in your mouth (can something melt meticulously?). End preface.

You’re probably thinking “big deal;” it’s just relating chocolate to art.

You, my friend (or possibly random stranger), are wrong.

Because as I was contemplating my chocolate as it slowly melted in my mouth (yes, I got to participate too), I realized this was not about art. This was about LIFE.

Which actually is kinda about art. But let’s focus on learning about life from chocolate right now

Here come the lists. Questions first:

·         What if you did everything in life with the same precision as you did with chocolate tasting?

·         Is everything worth that meticulous effort or do we need to decide what things should be savored and what should be devoured?

·         If you’re not really tasting something, is it even worth eating?

Things worth savoring/tasting:

·         European chocolate (proven on many occasions)

·         A great book. Even a good book. Heck, I’d savor a mediocre book too.

·         Sacrament Meeting in church, really thinking about Christ and His Atonement

·         Good lectures. Especially good history lectures.

·         Spending time with people you love

·         Running: it’s about the journey not the end!

·         Sunshine. And rain. And colorful trees. And the first snow.  (I could have summed that up with weather, but I chose to savor every word)

·         Prayer. Treasure those conversations with God.

·         Sunsets and Sunrises

·         College

·         Memories

·         Exquisite movies

That list is going to go on forever, but I’ll cut it off there. I tried to make a list of things that should be devoured, but didn’t make it very far.

·         Homework, papers, and tests. I occasionally cherish assignments and tests, but for the most part, I want the knowledge at the end. But the end will be better if I taste the above so…maybe cross this one off.

·         Miserable days.

·         Watery soup

·         Awkward dates (though I admit sometimes they’re worth savoring they’re that awkward)

·         Death (no prior experience there, but somehow I don’t think I’ll want to taste too much of the dying experience)

If you have two eyeballs, you noticed the first was longer than the first. Therefore…

There’s a lot more in life that needs to be tasted rather than devoured, but our busy lives make this difficult. We stuff all the tasks at hand into our mouths, getting as much as we can into our stomachs rather than enjoying every flavor of the journey. If we gobble up everything in life, we miss the subtle flavors of orange, bitterness, cream, or sweetness. I've missed a lot of those flavors this semester because I've want it do be done, but I don't want to look back and ask myself what the heck my sophomore year of college tasted like.

Hiking the Y in Provo with a plastic horse? That's tasting life.

Our experience of food is different based on the care that we gave to the journey of consumption. It takes effort to get something good and  even to realize that you have something good. You just can’t chew twice and make a valid judgment.

If you’re still with me, you probably are craving chocolate.

So when you go eat some, which you undoubtedly will, don’t inhale the whole portion.

Taste it.