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The Chocolate Dillema


I have the most annoying trait of making the most mundane happenings more complicated than they ought to be. But most of the time, it does help me uncover something new about the mystery that is human nature along the way. For example, today it was a kid’s birthday on my bus, and it’s tradition for the birthday boy to give out chocolates to the teachers, their classmates, and the other students on their bus. He looked like he was in 1st or 2nd grade, and he brought Ferrero Rochers to share with everyone.

The chocolates were distributed by our bus aunty to all the kids on the bus, starting from the back (where the older students sat) to the front with all the little kids. Initially, aunty took two chocolates and kept them with her - one for herself and one for our bus driver--and gave out the rest. By the time she got to the front of the bus, where the birthday kid and his friend were sitting, she had run out. Our bus driver piped in and told aunty to give his chocolate to the birthday kid. But as the boy reached out to take what was technically his chocolate, the friend sitting next to him grabbed it first, leaving the birthday kid crestfallen. Aunty pretended to have forgotten about the one still in her pocket until the bus driver reminded her to give it to him. She seemed a bit reluctant, but she handed it over anyway.

This got me thinking: what was more morally right? For aunty to have a chocolate that her economic and living conditions would never otherwise permit - a luxury she could only dream of--or for the child’s happiness to be preserved by giving the chocolate to him? Not doing so might have made him even more upset on his special day, but that sadness would only last temporarily, and he might even forget about it soon after. So what is right?

I have something I call “feeling thoughts” and “analytical thoughts” (both names I totally made up to make sense of how I think). My feeling thoughts are the impulsive ones that come to my mind--thoughts you could say are evoked by my heart. But immediately after I get them, for some reason my analytical thoughts kick in and start analyzing what factors made me initially think or feel that way.

In this scenario, my feeling thoughts were torn between the two options but leaned more towards the kid getting it, because I can understand how it might feel for a child when he isn’t made special on his birthday. A small event like this could make or break the rest of his day (or maybe I’m just being overly dramatic and the kid might not even care). But for some reason, I’m a sucker for kids and in awe of their unshattered innocence, so my impulsive thoughts made sense.

But later, something else hit me: for aunty, this might have been something she would cherish more, especially because a chocolate like this is such a luxury for someone like her. Maybe if it were up to me, I would have given it to her. Maybe if reality were fair, she would have had the opportunity to have it. But unfortunately, it isn’t, and in the end the kid got it. He won’t remember this, but she will.

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