Orange Juice

As a child, I could not have orange juice. Orange juice would flare up my tonsils and I'd end up falling sick, skipping school and staying home for at least a week. Henceforth, I was never allowed orange juice. For some reason, orange juice became synonym to junk food for me. I grew up believing that orange juice was bad for health. 

I never even had the time to pause, stop and really revisit my own opinion of orange juice. It was so fixed. So given. So natural. So logical. 

Thus, I would, without thinking, reject orange juice and pick up tea or water from the tray when being hosted by guests. 

It was not until I was in my 20s and my doctor suggested that I should replace tea with orange juice which made me pause. It was absurd. After all these years, something, some feeling came crashing down in me. Orange juice? Really? Isn't it bad for health? My doctor was as confused as I was. "Err, no Ms. Haider, orange juice is in fact integral for health.". 

Really. I pondered. Oh, well, I googled, shut my embarrassing confession within and couldn't believe how stupid I could be to not even question my own notion for all these years. I could live with flu but orange juice intake in flu to ease my flu? That seemed absurd. 

As children, we all are subjected to different experiences. From extreme cases of varying degree of abuses/violence to punishment, neglect, rejection, bullying etc. We may not have been direct victims of it often, but perhaps may have been its observers. Either way, we are subjected to experiences that make us carve our escape. Just like, because of tonsils, I couldn't have orange juice then as a child. 

Unfortunately, we grow up but somewhere within us remains a child that we fail to take along. This child still believes in orange juice philosophy.

A guest comes to me today with a tray of orange juice and water. 

I deny myself orange juice because I feel uncomfortable with it. I have always had water and tea. 

A moment of experience comes to me. 

I deny myself the pleasure of acknowledging and facing it because I feel uncomfortable with it. 

We deny ourselves simplicity because we find complexity more familiar. We confuse familiar with love, with happiness. We deny ourselves simple pleasures of living. 

Ironically, when the world tells us to try and break our perceptions like a doctor telling me to try orange juice. We pause. 

We then put on our victim mask and force ourselves to try experiences because the world is forcing us or because we ought to do it. Rather than experiencing and breaking perceptions and healing for the sake of improving ourselves, we try experiences because we feel forced to, not because we ought to. 

We push moments and experiences away, not because we don't like them, but because we have been in a habit of living the familiar, living the comfortable pain. If we embrace the moments and the experiences, we wouldn't have any pain left to feed our inner self. It just wouldn't feel like the inner kid.  

We pretend to like the orange juice, to go with the flow, but somewhere we are also trying to avoid it. Somewhere, we are all still striving to seek and live the familiar.

So when the air hostess asked me what would I like to have. 

"Er..tea..no, actually orange juice please? I uttered. 

"Sure" She said broadly smiling and handing me over a chilled glass of fresh orange juice. 

The inner child shouted within, I smiled gently at her, sshhed her, ensuring that I am a big girl with no tonsils left. It felt like embracing life.  And you know what, I did not get any tonsils after having that glass of orange juice. I did not feel like a victim of myself. I felt more Human. More real. More comfortable and more confident with Life.