What's in Your Cup?

There is a parable that I have heard several times that resonates with me. That story goes that you’re walking along with a cup of hot coffee, and someone bumps into you. You subsequently spill the coffee. The question is then asked, “Why did you spill the coffee?” Most people answer, “Because someone bumped me!” But the answer is really that you spilled the coffee because coffee is what is in the cup. It’s a great metaphor for what comes out of us when life bumps us is what we carry inside us.

Put another way, we can’t control what happens to us. We can only control how we react to it. Several years ago, life bumped me pretty hard. I suffered a lot of loss and major changes to my life in a very short period of time. I could have gotten angry. I could have taken it out on people around me. But I didn’t, for the most part. I mostly focused on what I needed to do in response. And I found a lot of peace.

We live in a society that has come to look for someone to blame whenever things don’t go as planned. But sometimes what we’ve planned is not meant for us. Sometimes, the universe has a different plan.

The old cliché of when one door closes another one opens is appropriate here. But we spend so much time staring at the door that has closed, yelling at it, pounding on it, kicking it and looking for who closed it on us that we miss the open door. We exhaust ourselves with anger and fault-finding and miss the opportunity that change can bring.

I find that the older I get, the more comfortable I am with change. Maybe it’s the wisdom of the years, maybe it’s my faith. Either way, I have come to trust that when something doesn’t go as I planned, the better step is to look around for new possibilities.

The same can be said when we feel slighted, hurt, betrayed, offended, or embarrassed. How we respond to it can either make it go away and become a lesson learned, or it can blow up and hurt everyone in our path. The choice is ours.

We can live in fear and on edge all the time, waiting for the anger and hatred inside us to spill out and burn anyone in our way, or we can live in peace and acceptance, knowing that life is just easier if we forgive, laugh off the little bumps, and move on. If you have only anger and hatred inside you, that is what will spill out when life bumps you. But when you have peace and love in your heart, grace and compassion are what will pour out on those around you. So, what’s in your cup?