The Candy Bag Analogy

My favourite Dutch liquorice

Do you ever buy yourself a bag of candy, open it and start eating? At first, the candy tastes great, your mouth starts watering and you keep on eating. Almost unconsciously you take another one and another one. Before you know it, the bag is almost empty. As soon as you realize that there is only a handful of the delicious candy left, you slow down. The last pieces of candy are treated as a specialty. You don’t just bite twice and swallow like with the first pieces, but you let them go round and round in your mouth and you suck until all the flavour is gone. The last few pieces in the bag actually last much longer than the whole first part. However, eventually you empty the bag of candy anyway.

Still you’re craving for more candy, so you go back to the candy store. The shopkeeper sees you looking around for another bag of candy. He comes up to you with a new kind of candy. He explains it is a special bag. All the ingredients are natural and, although the bag is twice as expensive as the bag you bought before, it will replenish itself automatically, over and over again. It sounds almost too good to be true, almost...