SALT-PEPPER THEORY

We get to hear so much about sacrifice done by our martyrs in the past and we still remember them because what they did was remarkable. Nobody knows their bank balance or position in jobs more than the fact that they gave up something for a bigger cause. I stated this just to bring out a small reflection on practical implications of sacrifice or compromise.

It is a universally known fact that nothing lasts forever so, we always want to grab all opportunities that come to us so that we have an experience of everything. In our constant search of accumulating everything, we tend to forget our priorities. Life gives us raw materials to cook our own food. We can buy salt even with a very less salary and cook our food. Gradually when we have the financial capacity, we buy other spices like pepper to add a better taste to our food. But, we can never get a good taste of food without salt (which is the cheapest of all).

Now, I'll put up the best of my efforts to interpret the above. We meet many people and get many opportunities in life. We know we cannot have all of them but, we should always keep in mind that there are certain people who bring out the actual meaning of our life. These qualify as 'salt' in our food of life. On the other hand, there are others who just add a taste to our life which is not a mandate for survival. These are the 'pepper'. We can have a happy and peaceful life just with the 'salt' even if we don't have the 'pepper'. But, the moment we tend to ignore 'salt' because of its easy affordability and because we think we have other substitutes to keep us happy, we realize that 'pepper' actually gives us a hard, intolerable spicy and pungent taste. Hence, we need to keep the 'salt' people close to us and grab only such opportunities in life which we can achieve along with the 'salt'. When we choose any opportunity which can take us away from 'salt', we tend to move towards the tough taste of 'pepper' which becomes intolerable in the absence of 'salt'.

P.S: You can actually try the following steps:

1. Take a pinch of only salt.

2. Drink water and wait for the taste to vanish.

3. Take a pinch of only pepper.

4. Compare the taste with that of salt.

5. Drink water and wait for the taste to vanish.

6. Take a pinch of salt and pepper together.

7. This will help you understand the "Salt-Pepper" theory better.

                                                                                                          -Somya Mishra