Do I Like Poptarts?

I wonder if I really like the things I like because I like them or because everybody else expects me to like them.

That reminds me of this episode of Gilmore Girls (well, everything reminds me of an episode of Gilmore Girls) where Lorelai questions whether she truly enjoys Poptarts, or has only been eating them for years because she knows the mother she resents doesn't like when she eats Poptarts. They were forbidden in her childhood home, therefore tasted like rebellion and freedom. Perhaps she likes that taste, not strawberry pastry.

Rory tells her to shut up and eat the Poptart.

Perhaps all of our likes and dislikes are born out of some random association. Do I really like grape Sweettarts or do I only eat them cause my brother always gave me his cause he hates grape? Does he hate grape because of all the bad experiences he had with Dimeatap when he was little? Does Mom hate the Cowboys only because her grandpa did?

Is there anything wrong with that? Is it peer pressure or just the way things are?

I wonder this because I was thinking of giving up a chunk of what has come to be my identity. I think somewhere along the way, it was what was expected of me, not what I truly and completely loved. Or maybe I did truly and completely love it once, but all the expectation and pigeon-holing quelled my desires? Or maybe I simply grew up and away from what I once thought I wanted?

But if weren't for some serious thinking and random events, I would still be plugging down that path that somebody (or maybe just myself) snapped me into a few years ago.

But, that all raises the question... do I still actually want what I now think I want or did I just switch tracks and create the allusion of making the right decision? How is anyone to know what they really like and what's just there for them to like? What's easy for them to like?

I think I truly love books. I can't think of a single reason in the world why I shouldn't, except for that I'm not sure that I do. But this is a ridiculous doubt. I loved them even when I was too little to read or to have philosophical discussions with myself on the internet and ask a bunch of rhetorical questions to my computer screen. So why am I questioning it?

Lorelai questioned it when she caught herself doing the opposite of whatever her mom wanted her to do. I caught myself doing it when I was doing what I thought everyone else expected me to do. How do you escape into a bubble, surrounded by no outside influences, to test what you actually like?

That makes me think of the Hyperbolic Time Chamber on Dragonball Z, strangely enough. Did I like Dragonball Z for real, or was it just what all my guy friends were watching and I knew a Dragonball Z lunchbox would score me major cred in 2nd grade?

"It's too hard for me to focus through all this doubt." (Do I actually love Bright Eyes??) I can't possibly go through life analyzing every whim, every small decision. I can't question my own motives everytime I order curly fries over regular ones, or get Sprite instead of Coke. I hate admitting a reliance on the darn things, but I just have to let myself feel instead of think and go wherever that leads me. After all, what happens when you make a bad decision with your head? You feel bad. You don't think bad.

Feel, not think. Feel, not think. This is going to be hard.