Kathryn Tse-Durham: Life is Like a Box of Chocolates…Preferably With Ganache

Forrest Gump is one of my favourite movies. I watched it as a teen with my high school friend Karen. I remember the tears streaking down my cheeks as I watched Tom Hanks’ face up close, his mentally-challenged but heartbreakingly endearing Forrest talking at Jenny’s grave and telling his childhood sweetheart how much he misses her. Some stories are timeless. No matter how old I get, I just don’t tire of them. Perhaps you remember the scene where Forrest sits on a bench next to a sweet elderly lady and offers up a box of chocolates.

I love chocolate. Especially dark chocolate with ganache. My, what a slice of heaven.

Anyway, I digress. Back to Forrest. He’d bought the box of chocolates for Jenny, whom he was about to go meet after a long separation. Against decorum (but when it’s Forrest, we instantly forgive him), he’d already eaten a few of the chocolates himself. In his Southern drawl he says to his bemused companion, “Mama always says that life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.” And that line shall always remain iconic, forever nostalgic, a shared wisdom that would’ve easily been dismissed as tackiness of the Hallmark channel variety if it hadn’t been uttered by such a beloved movie character.

In response to Forrest, I can almost hear the Chinese elders shudder and touch wood and retort, “Aiya, it’s fine as long as you don’t know what good stuff you’re gonna get.” 

There is a saying, a sort of mantra, in Chinese culture: “出入平安” which translates to ‘May you be safe wherever you go’. Naturally, we all want to get through the day without crashing the car or getting mugged, least of all to meet a prematurely fatal end. This is essentially what the mantra is about: live another day well without mishap. In my experience as a Chinese person growing up in the West, I often observed this fixation on safety and well-being, which partly explains why, in general, the Chinese are known to be particularly cautious and less risk-taking than their Western counterparts (though this is becoming increasingly less pronounced especially in the younger generation). It is as if those Chinese elders believe that repeatedly uttering this mantra “出入平安” will magically immunize us against life’s inevitable pitfalls. A life of static peace and quiet, untouched by tragedy, is what they wish for us, perhaps because they themselves had seen too much pain and suffering back in a time when poverty and hardship was the norm rather than the exception.

But for all their well-intentioned wishes, life is not static, and life is not supposed to be all smooth-sailing, is it? Even for the most disciplined and straight-arrowed, and regardless of our life circumstances, sooner or later we will all look tragedy in the eye. Because nobody is immune to life’s curveballs, which comes in many forms. And absolutely nobody, unless it’s fiction, is immune to life’s ultimate curveball – the great beyond, the final farewell.

And when you come to think about it, it is the unexpected, the dramas of life, that provide the best material for stories. Stories – the greatest ones – are always about the unexpected, the twists and turns that uproot the protagonist’s life in some way. After all, nobody really wants to hear a story in which nothing out of the ordinary happens. Great tragedy is often followed by heart wrenching story-telling. Back in 2011, who knew that a tsunami would hit and devastate so much of South-East Asia? It was a tragedy that uprooted and destroyed numerous lives, and it inspired the book-turned-movie “The Impossible” starring Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor. In 2020, who knew that the whole world would get hit by the COVID pandemic? The movie “Contagion” starring Kate Winslet suddenly became a wonder, something that Nostradamus fans look to as proof, no matter how nonsensical, that certain prophecies come true. And in a couple of years, when the wounds are not as fresh and it won’t be considered as offensive, Hollywood might make another blockbuster out of this global tragedy. In light of such disasters, when our mortality is at stake, we scale back and focus more on the basics – stay healthy, stay alive, be strong for our loved ones. And the Chinese mantra “出入平安” becomes ever more meaningful, for now we prize peace and quiet in a way that we never did before.

The older I get, the more it becomes apparent that life is what happens when things don’t go according to plan. Now, don’t get me wrong – I don’t mean we shouldn’t plan and work hard. My motto is that we should work hard and try our best, and leave the rest up to a higher power. Some of the best things in my life happened because things didn’t go according to plan.

In February, we welcomed our little girl – quite the unexpected curveball – to our family. It has been a hectic, life-changing few months, filled with sleepless nights and days revolving around her feeds, pumping milk, changing nappies, burping her, and getting her to sleep. Now that she’s so much more alert and inquisitive, I start seeing the little girl she might grow up to be. And it’s magical.

Life with two kids, a dog, work, and a household to manage (thankfully with a lovely domestic helper!) also means that for the next few years I won’t get a full night’s sleep. It also means that I won’t get as much time to write, so I’ll have to figure out how to maximise my time and do as much writing as I can with what free time I have. My fourth Ellanor book is still in the making – mostly in my head, because I’m still planning out the chapters – and so I won’t give any spoilers here, but only say that the next book will be full of action and drama, twists and turns. How will Elly and Goldie respond to life’s curveballs? Oh, and parts of it will take place in North and South America, and a couple of other places that I haven’t yet decided on. That’s all I shall disclose for now.

I look at my chubby little baby girl, now full of crescent-eyed smiles, and I watch her being cuddled by my son while my corgi lies close by sniffing her tiny toes, and my heart is full to bursting as my exhaustion melts away, and I think: sometimes, what you get is infinitely better than any ganache. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

Kathryn Tse-Durham
Author of The Ellanor Chronicles
30th April 2021

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