Most people are like a bar of soap
Most people are like a bar of soap.
A new bar of soap releases more soap and more foam than one needs when it is still new. It gets progressively harder as you use it and at the end, when you reach the core, it is dense, releases little foam and needs more involvement from the user to wash just as good.
People are like that.
When we are young and enthusiastic, we make more noise, are more involved in everything around us and give abundantly to the world. We know the answers before we hear the questions - we make more foam.
It changes as we grow older and wiser. We invest less in the world in general but we invest more specific in our close surroundings. We become involved in activities that affect our children at school, in our career at work and in our community where we want our families to live contented. What we give makes less foam but it washes cleaner.
As we grow older and the children leave the house we become harder. We give more discriminately. We are just as reliable citizens as we used to be but we want to see the return we get.
In the end, just before life uses us up, what we put into life depends on whether we were a cheap or an expensive soap.
If we were cheap, if we took out of life without investing anything in return, we make little foam, does not clean as well as when we started and are discarded without much ado.
If we were of good quality we release just enough foam to make our presence felt, we wash just clean enough so we are valued and we are not discarded but there is an unwillingness to let us go.
In the end it boils down to quality. If we started as low quality, cheap soap bars, we end as low quality, cheap soap bars
But if we started as high quality soap bars we end as high quality human beings - full of wisdom to share, wise enough to realise that we should ask questions rather than give answers, content in what we have contributed and received.
And if we were of exceptional high quality, the fragrance lingers a while after we have gone.