For most young people, life is a blissful experience. Every single day is a fresh chance to see or learn something new. Yet, even as we travel through this seemingly joyful and invigorating era of our lives, many of us happen to lose ourselves to stress and boredom. We stop enjoying life before it really even begins.

We share similar experiences with our coworkers and classmates. We seem to have the same responsibilities and opportunities as those around us. However, while others seem to absorb these experiences to become happy and successful versions of themselves, some of us suffer and struggle just to go through every single day. What seem like small hurdles for others become great obstacles for us. Activities that bring genuine excitement to others only seem to bore us. Nothing ever feels good. Eventually, this feeling of stress and general unhappiness metamorphoses into depression and anxiety. As we undergo all of this, we will discover that the truly frustrating part of this phenomenon is that there does not seem to be a definite cause for it. So, how exactly do we fix a problem whose cause we cannot determine?

Perhaps, the answer lies in the relationship between peppers and parrots. Peppers are spicy because they contain a chemical called ‘Capsaicin’ that induces a hot, tingling feeling when consumed. Pepper plants initially developed the presence of Capsaicin, which is most likely to deter animals and insects from eating the fruits and damaging them before they are mature. For the most part, this method was effective. However, in the case of birds, such as parrots, the Capsaicin has no effect. In fact, parrots enjoy many varieties of peppers as a delicious snack! The reason they can eat peppers with no effect is that they do not have many taste buds or a good sense of smell. This means that they are simply incapable of feeling spice.

This is particularly interesting because birds, like parrots, are the main group of organisms that are meant to spread the seeds of pepper plants through their droppings. Is it not quite intriguing that the only creatures that are capable of eating the pepper fruits are those that are meant to help it survive?

The experiences in our lives are a little like spicy peppers. We may one day look at a flock of parrots that are enjoying pepper fruits and begin to believe that we should be doing the same. So, even if the peppers burn us and make us uncomfortable, we continue to consume them with the hope that someday, we, too, would learn to enjoy them in the same way that parrots do. Unfortunately, no matter how hard we try, the peppers will never stop burning us because we are not meant to be eating them at all!

As we go through our lives, we convince ourselves to do several things without understanding why we do them. Many of these things not only fail to be useful to us but even begin to hinder our ability to be happy and productive. Yet, when our minds and hearts recognise that we are doing things that are unhealthy, we still force ourselves to continue down the same path. Because we observe colleagues or classmates who are finding success and happiness, we trust that we, too, will find the same. If we find that the things we do every single day do not make us happy just to do them, then we might not be doing the right things at all.

Peppers do not burn parrots because they are meant to be eating them. Life should not be stressful if we are fulfilling the purpose that we are meant to. We are all different from each other, so we cannot be meant to do the same things. Filter out parts of your life that prevent you from feeling productive and fulfilled, even if they seem to be helpful to others.

Then, when faced with those things that you just have to go through, even if it feels like you are not meant to be doing it, treat them like the peppers we add to our food. Although pepper in our food still has its characteristic heat, it makes the food all the more enjoyable. After all, what is life without just a little spice?