Life is like sambar...

I went on my first-ever work trip this month. Keeping the joys of newfound independence aside, I discovered something! So every day for the complimentary breakfast at the hotel I stayed in, sambar was served. Mind you they put extra ghee in their sambar and somehow, I love it! 

But that's not the point of this blog today. On day 2 of eating the same sambar on the menu, I realized it was spicier. Day 3...it was tangier. And that's when it hit me...Our life is like sambar! 

Each of us has a specific variation of vegetables, spices, water, and lentils in our sambar, i.e. life that we get to enjoy each day. Let's say, the water is the environment we are born in...our culture, family values, etc. The lentils are our specific variation of genes, the 'nature' part of our upbringing. The vegetables are our unique experiences, the schools and colleges we went to, the friends we made, and the jobs we do.

Now here comes the most interesting part, everything I mentioned thus far is external in nature i.e. even though we get to choose parts of it and mix and match, most of it requires input and output from the world around us. 

Of all the sambars around the world, what makes each of them different are the spices and condiments used, their ratio, and their quality. Spices in sambar are like emotions in our life. We get to exclusively pick and choose the intensity, ratio and quality of the emotions we put in our life. It's the one thing we can control and the one thing that can drastically alter everything about our life. 

Spices are also about balance, we can't have one without the other. We can also use one to cancel out the other. So are emotions, we need them all, the joy, the rage, the disgust, the sadness...everything. 

A friend once told me that the two best ingredients that can change any humble meal are heat/pressure and time. Let's apply this logic to our sambar called life. Timing is everything. Our lentils aka genes take the longest in the water aka our environment to grow and become their best version. Some vegetables like our education, take longer than others to become perfect for consumption which management students will call 'return on investment' in the corporate world. Some of our vegetables (aka friends) have stayed in our sambar called life longer than the others, but we need all of them nonetheless.

And when it comes to spices, some need to be fried and stay longer on the pan while others are finishing touches. Emotions are the same. Some need to stay longer inside of us to be expressed adequately. Anger, for example, is best expressed calmly. Joy, on the other hand, the more unabashed it is, the better.

Some of us hate sambar, to begin with. Some of us like parts of it. Some of us like it some days, but other days they would rather have anything but sambar. 

Whatever the case is, we are the chefs of our own sambars. Basic ingredients aside, we get to decide what we want it to look like. 

And when the pressure cooker of circumstances starts to jolt our sambar/life too much, we need to remember that at the end of that last whistle, we are up for a really, really good meal. The goodness and warmth of that beautiful bowl of sambar we call our life...

May the sambar that is your life forever be hot, spicy and bright!