Imagine you are walking through a cafe, carrying a full cup of coffee. Someone bumps into you and the coffee spills. You might think that you spilled the coffee because someone bumped into you.
But in actual fact, you spilled the coffee because there was coffee in your cup. Had there been chai latte in your cup or builder’s tea with two sugars, you would have spilled that.
The point is that what is in us leaks out.
Especially when we are shaken, rattled, irritated by life.
We can put on a good face most of the time, and be calm or rational and seemingly in control of ourselves and how we choose to come across.
But when something difficult happens, when someone irritates us or we get rattled by something, what is deeper inside us tends to spill out.
What spills out of your cup?
Our lives are like that coffee cup – a vessel that contains our thoughts, emotions, influences.
It follows therefore that what we choose to fill that vessel with really matters.
When you get rattled, what spills out of your cup – anger, harsh words, criticism, judgement?
Or grace, gratitude, kindness, openmindedness, humility? Do you leak judgement or are you quick to choose to think the best of the other?
If we put negative stuff into the vessel of our lives, that is what will come out.
But equally, we can choose to put good stuff into that cup. We can be intentional about filling our cups with gratitude, kindness, encouragement, generosity towards others, understanding, wisdom. We can choose to listen with a view to understanding the other so that we can learn to be more open minded with those we initially disagree. Equally, we can focus on what is good, noble, true, lovely and beautiful rather than what is ugly, harsh, unkind.
This story is not original to me, I found it on Facebook some time ago. As is often the case with social media, it is hard to trace the original source. It may be the saying of a Vietnamese Thien Buddist monk; I saw it first on Facebook here.
What leaks out of us is also how we come across to others – whether ugly or beautiful. I love this quote of Roald Dahl from The Twits:
A person who has good thoughts cannot ever by ugly – what a fabulous image.
Last time I was musing on taking time each week to notice and record good things that happen to us this year, whether large or small. I started talking about the role of our brains in this, and the influence our default thinking patterns have. We will muse on this more in my next blog.
But this is all linked to the importance of choosing to fill our cups with good things, to choose to have good thoughts and not allow our minds to be consumed with negativity and darkness.
So I encourage you this week to notice what you are filling the vessel that is your life with. What are you putting in and therefore what is likely to spill out?
Beautiful thoughts or ugly thoughts? And therefore, how are other people seeing you?
Food for thought as always.