Lessons in Oreos

Two chocolate wafers. Sweet, creamy filling. Twist it apart and dunk it in milk until it soaks in. Just before it crumbles, pop the whole thing in your mouth and enjoy. Then repeat the process multiple times. Who doesn’t love an oreo cookie? Well, when I was a kid I hated oreos. It may have something to do with my grandma who was a stickler about being proper. Absolutely couldn’t dip your cookies in milk and definitely weren’t going to “play” with your food by twisting it apart. I mean, what did she think was going to happen? We’d be licking the cream filling out of an oreo one day, and the next we’d be knocking over a bank, still with that sweet cream filling stuck to our fingers? But in her house, rules were rules. Nobody even questioned what grandma had to say…..until my wife came along. I think our oldest daughter was just about a year old when she was enjoying her first oreo cookie at great-grandma’s house. “Now, we don’t twist them apart. Eat like a nice girl,” Grandma said (or something to that effect). My wife…..I love her…..responded without hesitation, “She’s just fine. She can eat it however she wants.” For only being 4’11”, Grandma sure could carry a grudge for the next decade or so. Anyway, back to the oreos. I grew up eating all kinds of junk food. We always had cookies in the house, twinkies, ding-dongs, ho-hos, all the “good” stuff. And we always had a package of oreos, but I wouldn’t touch them. “No thanks, I don’t like oreos,” I would always say as I go for some other sweet in the cupboard. Seems like an appropriate response when being offered something you don’t like, but there was just one problem. I had never, not once in my life, eaten an oreo. I don’t know why but something inside me had decided I didn’t like them without even taking a bite. Doesn’t that seem dumb?

No doubt you were much smarter than me as a child, and likely still are today, but I wonder if you’re at all like me. Have you ever decided you didn’t like something, or someone, before you even gave it a try? I think sometimes in life we can be very quick to decide we don’t like something that we don’t understand. Maybe it’s just me? I can remember saying that I hated algebra. There’s nothing innately wrong with algebra that it should elicit this kind of hatred from me at all. The problem was that I didn’t understand it, so I just decided to hate it instead. Have you seen this in political discussions? Racial relations? Religious arguments or ideological debates? It’s often much easier to just dismiss someone as “ignorant” than to actually take the time to know them, hear them, and respect their thoughts (even if you disagree).

Looking back, I regret missing out on all those oreos I could have enjoyed as a child. Although they would have had to be eaten dry and intact, I would have enjoyed something sweet and wonderful if I would have allowed myself to experience that fabulous mixture of white and chocolate deliciousness. As I continue to age, I hope to keep learning to have an open mind about things, people, cultures, and ideas that are different than me. There is so much beauty and goodness in this world for us to enjoy if we will simply open our hearts and minds to receive it.

Is there something or someone that perhaps you could open your heart to today and discover the goodness that you’ve been missing out on?