I made vegetable soup last night.

Well, I made it, but I wasn't particularly pleased with the outcome. It looked drab. Unappealing, even. And before you start wondering whether it tasted bad, it didn't. At least, that's what everyone who ate it seemed to think. Nobody complained. Nobody pushed their plate away or made an unpleasant face. But I wasn't satisfied.

You see, I like my pepper grated, not blended. I like to see the little bits of tomatoes, tatashe, onions and pepper scattered throughout my food. I like the texture, the colours, the little specks of red peeking through the greens. I like knowing that the pepper is there, not just tasting it.

Unfortunately, my pepper was blended this time.

My mum had insisted on going to bed early, so she paid someone to grind the pepper outside. I forgot to tell her to instruct them not to make it too smooth. Just one round, I would have been perfectly happy. But nobody gave the instruction, and I ended up with a pot of soup that tasted fine but looked nothing like what I had imagined.

And somehow, I've been thinking about that soup.

It reminds me of how my life has been lately. Drab, unappealing and, sometimes, difficult to look at.

It's strange how I can be perfectly happy today, without any particular reason, and wake up tomorrow feeling sad for apparently every reason. Some days, I am excited about the smallest things. Other days, even the things I ordinarily enjoy seem to lose their colour.

I have things happening around me, things I am looking forward to, things I am worried about, things I wish I could change and things I have absolutely no control over. Sometimes, I feel like I'm making progress. Other times, I wonder if I'm simply moving around in circles.

And perhaps that's what bothers me most. Not necessarily that everything is terrible, but that things aren't coming together the way I imagined they would.

Like my soup.

I know there's something good in there. I know it tastes fine. Other people can eat it and enjoy it without giving its appearance a second thought. But I still find myself looking at it, wishing it had turned out differently.

But then, I made spaghetti.

I like spaghetti. I really do. There's something comforting about making a meal you know you'll enjoy. No disappointment, no staring at your plate and wondering what could have been done differently. Just spaghetti, and the simple pleasure of eating something you like.

Perhaps that's worth remembering too. Not every day is going to be a vegetable soup kind of day. Sometimes, there will be spaghetti. Sometimes, things will turn out just the way you want them to. And sometimes, happiness will show up without an invitation or a particularly convincing reason.

Maybe I'm doing the same thing with my life. Looking at all the things that are going right and somehow struggling to appreciate them because of the things that aren't.

Perhaps I need to learn that not everything has to look beautiful before it can be good. That a season can be uncomfortable without being entirely wasted. That I can be unhappy with how something turned out without deciding that the entire thing is a failure.

I don't have to pretend that my soup is beautiful. Neither do I have to pretend that life has been particularly colourful lately.

But perhaps I can learn to enjoy what is still good while I figure out what needs changing.

I'll probably grate my pepper next time. I'll make sure of that.

As for life, well, I suppose I'm still figuring out the recipe.

For now, I have a pot of drab-looking vegetable soup, a plate of spaghetti, a rather unpredictable collection of emotions, and the hope that things will eventually come together.

Not necessarily perfectly.

Just beautifully enough💙