The Parable of the Jelly Beans

My favorite flavor of Jelly Bellies is buttered popcorn. If given the opportunity, I'll sift through the container and pick out the buttered popcorn beans one by one. I find that people either passionately love or hate the flavor. There is no in between.

I was really excited when WinCo came to town several years back, and I discovered that they carried buttered popcorn jelly beans in the bulk bins. I could buy an entire bag of just buttered popcorn Jelly Bellies! So I did! It was small bag, of course, since Jelly Bellies cost more than bag of rare gems, but I was thrilled at the opportunity.

I brought the jelly beans home, ate them, and found that I didn't enjoy them as much when I had a bag full of the same flavor. It turns out that my favorite jelly beans taste much better when they are searched for in a sea of other flavors.

I was explaining this phenomenon to Shannon the other day for the purpose of simply discussing jelly beans flavors, but afterward (as I continued eating the jellybeans that my kids left on my bed, rendering them fair game) I pondered the different life lessons to be learned from jelly beans. In the case of the buttered popcorn jelly beans, there is a great lesson about opposition.

My buttered popcorn jelly beans taste better to me when they are among other flavors of jelly beans - peach, coffee, lime, root beer... Some flavors are better than others, and some are really easy to discard (even without the selection of dirt, vomit, and earwax). In order to really appreciate the buttered popcorn, I also need to have the possibility of eating the other flavors.

Shannon is a teacher, and she has often discussed with me how you can't teach someone something without also teaching them what it's not. For example, for a child to understand what RED is, it's not enough to show the child something red. The child also has to comprehend what is not red - green is not red. Yellow is not red. And only when the child understand what red is not, does she truly understand what red is. 

Likewise, how would we know happiness if we didn't know sadness? How would we appreciate health if we didn't also experience illness? Sadness, illness, and other hard things are jelly beans I don't want to eat, but if those things didn't exist, I wouldn't fully enjoy the buttered popcorn.

In the book The Upside of Stress by Dr. Kelly McGonigal, she discusses research that has shown that people who have suffered an average number of traumatic events are more satisfied with their lives than people who haven't suffered a lot of adversity (I don't know what the "average number" is - I'm not sure I want to know), but there's something to be said for hard things. I don't invite them, I don't want them, but I understand their purpose. They are the jelly beans we don't want, but they make the best jelly beans taste all the yummier!