It is easy to blame the other, someone else, anyone else for our moods, our actions, words.
Yet, as this lovely story from Thich Nhat Hanh so clearly shows, whose moods, actions, words are they?
What were we holding inside when it all spilled them out?
I found this analogy interesting:
You are holding a cup of coffee when someone comes along and bumps into you or shakes your arm, making you spill your coffee everywhere.
Why did you spill the coffee?
“Well because someone bumped into me, of course!”
*Wrong answer.*
You spilled the coffee because there was _coffee_ in your cup.
Had there been tea in the cup, you would have spilled _tea_.
*Whatever is inside the cup, is what will spill out.*
Therefore, when life comes along and shakes you (which WILL happen), whatever is inside you will come out. _It’s easy to fake it, until you get rattled._
*So we have to ask ourselves… _”what’s in my cup?”_*
When life gets tough, what spills over?
Joy, gratefulness, peace and humility?
Or anger, bitterness, harsh words and reactions?
You choose!
Today let’s work towards filling our cups with gratitude, forgiveness, joy, words…
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Dare Boldly 
I like this!!
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❤
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Whoa, I love this analogy! Makes me want to calm down even more and watch myself when I get stressed to see what spills out. 💙
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I am with you on that one Pamela — and if you read Jim’s reflection below — the meaning and beauty of the cup goes even deeper. Hugs ❤
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Louise, I love this …. it also made me think of a reflection I heard 25 years ago at May Memorial Unitarian Universalist Society, which I used to attend. I googled the minister’s title, “mended cup of meaning,” and his name (Nick Cardell) was the first link to show up! Nick has since passed away, but here is a quick summary: The Rev. Nick Cardell writes:
For thoughtful, conscious life all creation is precariously contained in a mended cup of meaning. It is the cup from which we drink our lives—the cup with which we drink to life. It is a cup which is broken and mended, broken and mended over and over again. Each time an era passes, a way of life is destroyed, or someone of significance to us dies, we cry out that our cup is broken, and so it is. Yet, somehow—together—we must find, we do find the way to mend it all over again.
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This is beautiful Jim! Thank you for sharing his reflection. He sounds like he was a great, and wise, man.
Together, we will find a way to mend this cup again. ❤ Hugs
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Fascinating! Reminds me of how again and again it is all to easy to look in the wrong places for the source of our frustrations, and how quickly we look outside of ourselves for something / someone to blame. Better to acknowledge what is there in the first place than to become angry when we are made to face it.
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So true Amanda! That blame game is rather divisive and disruptive to peace of mind! ❤
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