Life Isn't Like A Box Of Chocolates...It's Like A Box Of Matches

The other day a thought came to me while I held a box of matches. I thought about the amazing potential contained in the small cardboard box. If you live near the mountains (which I do...), you hear over and over again the damage just one match can do. Even an errant spark can do fantastic amounts of damage.

Just one match, just one spark.

Without humans harnessing the power of fire, we wouldn't have our modern society. Most cars work because pistons use fire to operate. Without fire, there would be almost no cars to get us to and from, no trucks to bring us food to survive. Our very lives depend on fire.

Of course, fire gives us life, but it can also destroy. Several years ago the mountain behind our house caught fire. Being so close that you feel the heat and smell the smoke can change a person as you watch the destruction. No wonder people jump in their cars as see how close they can come to the flames. We mimic moths drawn to the light.

So, inside a regular box of three hundred matches are three hundred chances, three hundred opportunities to do good, or to do the opposite. And since fire can continuously burn as long as there's heat, fuel, and oxygen, one match can literally destroy  a tree, a house, a city, a country, a planet.

And there's three hundred matches in a box, and millions of boxes out there.

No, even though I enjoyed the words of Winston Groom (or possibly Eric Roth...), all a box of chocolates has is choices, a box of matches give you choices, opportunities, and consequences. Life is more than sweets, it's pain and joy and destruction and rebirth.

Life is like a box of matches, with unlimited potential based on the choices we make.