‘Look like the innocent flower, but the serpent under thee’- Macbeth

All that glitters is not gold, an age old idiom that rings so true in adulthood.
This idiom is best described in the infamous, but rather boring (according to me!) school set-book, Macbeth. Here the main theme is appearance versus reality.
With our everyday lives we experience this theme but shrug it off thinking, but that’s life. Common examples are watching TV commercials displaying the most beautiful attire. This attire is said to be designed to fit every shape (not considering round is also a shape).
Upon purchasing this attire, one ends up looking like a stuffed gammon rather than glamorous.
What about in our personal lives, how many Romeos/ Juliets cross our paths?
Romeos decked in incense-stick smelling perfume, fake smiles and smooth lines claiming to be knights in shining armour but turn out to be frogs in tinfoil.
Juliets, whose physique can only be likened to a pole, because didn’t you know being healthy and not anorexic is last season.
These babes come clad with boyfriends, a cigarette and acne, but hey, beauty is in the eye of the beer-holder and not beholder.
Not only does it hit deep when we look in the mirror, or at our choice in mates, but also when we look in our pockets.
When December comes along its “phola time”, a term best used to describe chilling and money spending. Months of planning on how to spend the money you don’t have, much like counting your chickens before they hatch, go into December budgeting. Sadly when the cheques arrive you won’t be “pholaring” but rather doing the SAPS (sitting and parking swaak), “swaak” is slang for bad or broke.
Now there are numerous examples, dating back to our childhood like the story of Hansel and Gretel and their candy house, turned out to be a diabetes-infested paradise owned by a witch.
The nice teacher who told me not to cry in grade one, as I clung to my mother’s blouse, became the reason for my tears much later on.
Later in life it progressed more, and we gradually accepted this, and, yes, its part of life. But the next time we make a step in life, remember life is never as it seems, don’t judge a book by its cover.