As I relish in the delicious taste of my one candy per day, my fur baby, Muffin, won’t stop staring at me. She gives me the most adorable puppy face she can muster, and in all honesty, she does a pretty good job. She keeps looking at me… waiting for me to hand her a piece of chocolate. But I don’t because I know chocolate is bad for her. Chocolates can be fatal to dogs. And trust me, I know. Muffin found my candy stash when she was younger and ate it all. There were 32 pieces of chocolate! And she ate it ALL! I had to rush her to the emergency and…. It was a nightmare! Of course, she has the memory of a goldfish and has forgotten how hard it’d been for her. If she remembered, she wouldn’t be begging me for the candy right now.

But on and on, she begs. Keeps giving me the puppy eyes. Waits for the candy to drop out of my fingers so that she can gobble it up. Some days, I give in and give her a teeny tiny piece of candy. You know, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Like ingesting a little bit of venom per day until you’re immune to all other snakes. Or did you watch that episode in ‘True Crime’ where the husband kept giving her tiny doses of arsenic, and she didn’t die? So he gave her a whole lot, and she was merely hospitalized. The high amount should’ve killed her, but it didn’t because her body had been getting used to arsenic! Ugghh. I digress. See? This is why I write. My thoughts have no focus.

So yea, once in a blue moon, I give her a teeny tiny bit of candy, and she gobbles it up. I guess she loves the taste coz she won’t stop asking—every single day. And I won’t give it to her, even though I know she begs because I know it’s toxic for her. This makes me wonder if that’s exactly what the Universe does. Sometimes I ask Him for things. Give him the most adorable puppy eyes I can muster. Beg, even. And out of pity, sometimes He gives me a little taste of what I’ve been asking for. But try as I may, I will never get it. Because it’s not good for me, and the Universe knows. He knows everything. He makes things hard sometimes, so I may come out of it stronger. He puts obstacles in my path so I can work harder to get to my goal. He knows that the most massive characters are seared with scars, so He doesn’t hold back. He breaks my heart so I can piece it back together and watches as I rise again, like a phoenix.

We’re all suckers, aren’t we? If we want something really really bad, we’ll lap up any breadcrumbs thrown our way. It’s not even the real meal. Not even close. You can’t taste the flavors that way, just bits and pieces of what constitutes the whole thing. It’s like the tiny pieces of a flaky cookie that falls off the mouth. But we lap it up anyway. What was that? Flour? Sugar? Can’t tell! We’ll settle for however little we have, thankful that the Universe listened. Thank you for handing me these crumbs! That wasn’t part of the deal? How many of us have the guts to say ‘NO,’ then? “No. I refuse to settle for this. Give me the real thing. I’ll wait.”

Sometimes in the middle of our walk, Muffin gets stuck or unsure of what path to take. So she just sits right there, waiting for me to take the leash and lead her on. Zero doubt in her mind that I’m a few steps behind, waiting to guide her. And that’s exactly what I do. I wait. The things that are meant for me by divine right are mine forever. Nothing can take them away from me. I sit right here and wait for the Universe to guide me on.