For years, I thought peanut butter contained butter – like chocolate milk or milk chocolate, both of which have milk and cocoa. It took me years to realise that peanut butter doesn’t mean peanuts and butter, but peanuts turned into something like butter.
Like coconut milk.
Coconut milk is made from coconuts themselves, but chocolate milk isn’t cocoa made into milk. The logic shifts quietly, and we don’t even notice.
Language hides, bends, and blurs things. It isn’t always logical. Sometimes you have to look beneath the words to find what they really mean — the way you check the ingredients on a label to see what’s actually inside.
Both are habits worth keeping. They help in life — because life works a lot like language.
Things can feel right but mean something else entirely. That’s why I’ve learned to pause — to question words, ideas, even appearances. To read the ingredients, not just the label.
It’s a small act of awareness, but it changes how you see things. You start noticing what’s real, and what’s been polished, repackaged, or renamed.
Sometimes the truth isn’t missing. It’s just hiding behind, waiting for someone to look close enough to find it.