I used to love mayonnaise. I lived by the principle that there wasn’t much that couldn’t be made better with mayonnaise. Well, perhaps there was one thing: my weight.

Breaking up with that creamy, fatty deliciousness wasn’t easy. Yet once I did, I never looked back. Now, I am able not only to mute the siren call of those eye-level jars as I head down the condiments aisle, I most often don’t even hear them in the first place.

Does that make the mayonnaise jars sad? Do they take it personally that I no longer stop, linger, and read their ingredients, carefully averting my eyes from the calorie-count? Do they wonder what they did wrong that made me turn my back on them?

Even if the mayonnaise jars weren’t inanimate, they wouldn’t be able to know what my thinking was. Nor can we know what another person’s thinking is when they no longer heed our siren call, avert their eyes from us, or simply move on from what was.

Each of us has our own path, our own stones to uncover, our own journey to navigate. Not taking it personnally when others’ paths don’t include us can be part of our journey down the aisles of life.