I Believe in Chocolate

Last week I had the joy of facilitating a summer camp for my school called Leadership Academy. We teach kids that "who you are is how you lead" and that there are many kinds of leaders. We teach them to find the qualities that they possess in order to be a good leader.

The culminating assignment for this week was a podcast called "This I Believe," a spinoff of the NPR bit. We asked students to write about what they believe. Naturally I believe in chocolate. Intrigued? Here is my podcast:

Ever since I can remember, in my house no other flavor of cake existed besides chocolate. My mother would bake chocolate cakes or brownies weekly for my siblings and me. My mother and I consuming the largest piece. Straight As, birthdays, or any other special occasion called for a trip to Sarris Ice Cream Parlour for a sundae. Chocolate of course. If there is one thing my mother and I have in common, it is chocolate. I believe in chocolate.

When I turned 16, I got a job in order to earn

some spending money. I didn’t want just any job. Folding jeans or waiting tables just wasn’t for me. If I had to spend 20 hours per week working, I figured, I might as well be working with chocolate. I began working at Sarris’ Candies scooping ice cream. I met fellow chocoholics and made good friends. I didn’t mind going to work every day because I got to work with people like me, and I got to eat all the chocolate ice cream I desired. For the next four years I was committed to hot fudge sundaes, chocolate assembly lines in the factory, and filling shelves full of chocolate goodies. This never felt like a job. They say, do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life. The way I look at it, I got paid to eat chocolate.

Chocolate has also allowed me to combine something else I love, writing. While applying to internships in college, I started my own blog to showcase some of my writing. I began a blog called Chocolate Emergency and still continue it today. Everywhere I go, I purchase a piece of chocolate from that region or a local bakery and blog about it. While this started out as an excuse to eat more chocolate and showcase my writing, it turned into a hobby. Now I have friends who buy me chocolate to taste and turn into a blog entry. (And I have another excuse to eat chocolate!) Not a bad deal. I was able to refine my craft of writing all while doing something I love to do - eat chocolate.

Obviously, my favorite food is chocolate. My second favorite food is anything covered in chocolate. Milk, white, dark, doesn’t matter. I don’t discriminate when it comes to eating chocolate. The more chocolate I eat, the happier I am. This correlation just makes sense to me. If I can find something I like and I’m good at, I’ll do more of that. There has to be a little bit of chocolate in everything I do.