A pomelo, a life-long lesson

I remember the first time my mother made me peel a pomelo, a fruit I have eaten many times yet never touched my hands on peeling. A typical fruit of Southeast Asia, a succulent and nourishing mother nature’s gift for Vietnamese people, a familiar dessert after every dinner suddenly became an intricate puzzle I now stumbled to solve.

As delicious as it seems, peeling a pomelo can put off any food lovers. You must first learn how to correctly position a sharp knife with just enough force from your wrist. A loosely-held knife with too little push will get you nowhere into its thickness, but too much pressure can ruin the entire flesh inside. A few scores from the stem end to the bottom of the fruit without spoiling the rind, and you pass the first level of the challenge. Then, it gets harder when you have to peel off the next pith and pry the pomelo in half with your bare hands. However, for me, the most tricky part is the removal of the membranes of each segment. To get into that juicy, semi-transparent pink flesh, you have to dismantle it with the greatest care. Like taking off a shirt from an infant, you carry all the gentleness and attentiveness, or else the flesh will break apart, leaving you an unattractive, messy plate of pomelo. You may question: why exaggerate the problem when the fruits all flush down into your mouth? “We eat with our eyes, too” - my mother reasoned.

Despite my ceaseless efforts, I never managed to complete the last step. I was never able to produce beautiful, perfect semi-circular segments of pomelos like my mother did. As in her words, I filled my family’s stomach but was far to satisfy their eyes. As in my thoughts, I was so close to finishing the puzzle if it had not been for that final piece, the “dumb” piece that thwarted me from pleasing my mother or that made me a bit more discouraged after every futile try.

The more I unsuccessfully peeled the pomelos, the better vision I had about its underlying reasons. From the universe of a fruit peeler, my mind turns to the universe of a learner. Somehow, all my most bitter failures in life share the same bit of reasons with the “pomelo” one. I could not succeed in removing the membranes with the flesh intact because I was too busy watching the news, because I looked down on the complexity of the task, or because I was simply not persistent enough. Academically, I failed at the national English exam because I did not prepare for it wholeheartedly as I was busy dispersing my time to participate in a debate competition. I ranked bottom at the entrance exam to high school because I thought it was below my capacity. And I failed to get into my dream secondary school because I soon resigned to its difficulty. My mother’s lesson of pomelos corresponds with a more significant lesson of my life: I failed because I was not dedicated enough.

I have further come to realize that the “peeling the pomelos” challenge shares a cause-and-effect relationship with other challenges I have and will encounter. Every time I painstakingly and carefully removed the membranes, I received a whole beautiful segment of pomelo. Every time I work with unwavering determination, the results come out rewardingly. Thanks to the bizarre task I was made to execute every dinner, I was now able to put all my heart into everything I did, either getting a silver medal in a regional English contest or leading my first debate club to success. From such a tiny and trivial thing as learning how to peel a fruit to many other life-altering decisions, efforts are required. If I pay sufficient care to a small task, the force of habit will enable me to do the same at the bigger ones. If I don’t, I will always be stuck with that green circle fruit, revising my mother’s lesson forever after.