A few wise and a few not-so-wise individuals told me - through various alternative phrases and descriptions - that you are what you eat. The wisdom of the individuals in question may indeed be rather questionable at times, especially given that some of these individuals exist as cheesy animation and poor voice acting, but the validity of the statement nonetheless withstands the trials of credibility. The more oblivious or obnoxious among us might take the statement at only face value, believing - fully or facetiously - that a human is, quite literally, what he eats. Say, for example, that I embody the statement - following the literal logic, I am a being made entirely of gummy worms, since I ate a bag of gummy worms today. Chemically, I share some similarity with the treats - our mutual constituents include water, sugar, and collagen - but by no means do I exist as a compound of synthetic, squishy, infinitely sweet invertebrates smaller than my pinky finger.

Just like essentially every other person on this planet, I’ve grown up with many such phrases as you are what you eat. Each language possesses a slew of these bizarre examples of illogic. For anyone attempting to learn another language, these phrases present annoyance abundant. I, for example, encountered a few in learning traditional Bavarian greetings in my first German class, and I’ve seen a few foreign exchange students drop jaws – well, not really – at my blasé use of break a leg. Thus, when I say you are what you eat, the same rule applies: I don’t mean to say that you hypothetically exist as a hypothetically five-foot-six key lime pie because you hypothetically ate a key lime pie last night. No - I take those five words for their more symbolic meaning, that while I may not be the bowl of chili that I ate last night, the bowl of chili says something about who I am. Indeed, no better question can define me as an individual - “How are you what you eat?”

I commonly eat at a small pizza shop down the road from school. I visited the shop once or twice as an underclassmen and maybe once or twice as a child, but my junior year saw me stop by at least once or twice a week. I at first came mostly for the pizza, served as a single sizable slice - true to the restaurant's name, “The Slice.” The owner always cooked his pizzas with a titanic, rusted-obsidian, likely decades-old oven he kept just behind the counter. The pizzas-to-be lay proudly displayed at the far left of the counter; always highlighted by a warm yellow light, they modeled for all potential customers who happened to pass by. I, like many others before me, fell to their allure. I saw the tried-and-true cheese, pepperoni, sausage alongside the more eccentric barbeque chicken and gyro sandwich pizzas. Sometimes I ordered one slice at a time; other times, I ordered two. I always found satisfaction, no matter the quantity. Each slice, from the sausage to the spinach, aroused from my tastebuds a standing ovation. I stopped by more often, trying out new pizzas with each time, until doing so simply became routine for me: conclude school, walk to The Slice, eat pizza, complete homework. My homework sometimes sparked the interest of the owner; we started chatting during each of my visits. Sometimes, he told me about his times in the Peace Corps, about the difficulty of teaching something so commonplace (to us) as English to those who could, at best, muster up “No English.” I learned through him the nauseatingly prolix and insatiably interesting writings of G.K. Chesterton: “If you can read Chesterton, you can read anything,” he claimed. I took up the challenge with pride and dove into the book that first piqued my curiosity. What’s Wrong with the World indeed proved the owner correct. My pride suffered severe blows at the hands of Chesterton’s textual monolith; however, I completed the work with a bolstered vocabulary and assumed wisdom. Of course, we didn’t always just discuss such misty topics as the wise way to shape society; sometimes, we just talked about the life - girls, parents, school. He shared with me some of his wisdom; I absorbed that wisdom with eager ears. He advised me to the ultimate unimportance of the SAT in regards to happiness when I pedantically stressed about merely the PSAT. He eased me through the entropy of young love when I grossly exaggerated the gravity of a rather small break-up.

So, how am I what I eat? I’m not the ashen bread of the crust, not the chewy foam of the cheese, not the superabundant sprinkles of sausage I ate in the pizza. I am what I gained through the pizza - sans the irresistible flavor, of course.