Dark Chocolate

It was going to be the mundane experience of checking out groceries for the week at a store I’ve been going to for years. It generally starts with a perfunctory nod and mumbled greetings by a person at the counter. Then, as I place the milk and bread on the belt, my eyes would be caught by the cover of tabloids that talk about cheating celebrities and their impending divorces. Then, my mind would jump to the internal workings of places that come up with these stories. I’d imagine the brainstorming sessions at these places and the personal lives of people that work at these places. Do they keep a stash of awkward pictures of each celebrity? I’d wonder. By that time typically I’m asked to swipe my card and express my preferences about the milk container going directly into the cart. All this ends with another nod and exchange of good wishes with the stranger before she moves on to the next customer.

It started off the same this time and would have ended as usual if the packet of dark chocolate had not jumped into the bag as it did. “Wow! Boop – it jumped in there as if it knew that’s where it was supposed to go”, she said. She was elderly but energetic and wore her hair in a manner that seemed to suggest that she did not belong in there. “That’s one funny piece of chocolate. Boop – it jumped in there” she said again. “Somebody could write a story about it. It could become big. Like Harry Potter. She made a billion dollars with that.”, she said. This was not the human robot I was used to seeing. “Do you write?”, I asked. “Yes, I do”, she said. “Stories?”. “Poems and songs. My poems were published in the millennium book of poems. I was one of the selected 100 poets.”

Do we have no use for a poet other than to scan items off a conveyor belt?

Why is our society rewarding me, an engineer, but not her, an artist? She is arguably a better artist than I’m an engineer. I would not make it to the list of 100 selected engineers of my time. The answer, unflattering for me, is not that I’m good or talented but that I’m useful. The world happens to need my skill at this point in time. Born in a different time in history, I’d likely have been laying bricks for her house or fixing the wheel of her carriage. Maybe somewhere in the future that we engineers are building today lies a much different kind of society. One where machines autonomously produce our food, build our houses and keep us healthy. What does one do in such a world? History suggests that we’d continue to toil feverishly in that world too. With all the mundane problems behind us, hopefully, we’d be consumed by creative pursuits. We’d stretch our minds unfettered by physical limitations. Unencumbered by the trivialities that go by the name of  making a living. Hopefully, the ones that are rewarded in that world are the ones that see a piece of chocolate slip into a bag and see a story in it. And are unafraid to share it.