Original Written 1/7/2007
We were visiting my Mom when she showed me the spoon that she wants me to have someday. It was purchased just a few days after I was born by my grandmother, Mimi.
At the time we were a small family. It was just my Dad, my Mom, and me, and all three of us were struggling for life. My Dad had been in an accident and had been given 9 hours to live, and my Mom and I had struggled for life during my birth.
Mimi had come to help out. At the time of the spoon purchase, we were all on the mend and she and my Mom wanted to make some spaghetti. Mom told me that Mimi said to her, “Let’s get a really good spoon, one that can handle a lot of spaghetti and will last a long time.” They did.
When I wrote this my dad was 86, way outliving that nine hour prediction, and that spoon looks as good today as the day it was purchased. It is not glamorous, but it is beautiful, and useful. It’s exactly what Mimi wanted. It has a hole in the handle, a large spoon surface and whatever it is made of has remained, as it was that first day.
It would be hard to pick better qualities to aspire to, strong, sturdy, and useful. It is also beautiful because it is consistent with its intent and purpose to be sturdy, strong, and useful. I am sure that as the next generation uses that spoon it will only gain in its beauty because even more people have come to rely on it to be exactly what it was intended to be.
Too bad we are not more like that spoon. We tend to make our life purpose complicated. When we ask most people what they most want they often give a big purpose answer like, “to bring peace to the world”. Complicated. Why not peace to one person at a time, by being exactly what we have been “designed” to be.
The spoon doesn’t have a desire to be a fork. It would make a terrible fork or knife. However, as a sturdy, useful, consistent, and clean line spoon, it’s a given. It takes no work on its part. It just is. Perhaps this is too simple of a symbol to apply to our lives and ourselves? I don’t think so.
The problem often lies with our having no idea exactly what we were intended to do or be. Alternatively, even if we do know, we think it isn’t possible. Most people live someone else’s life and intent. Sometimes that other person is ourselves from the past, or even the future. We live how we think it is supposed to be, or what is expected of us.
However, like the spoon, our purpose is actually very clear when we begin with the qualities of who we are and respect and honor that they are unique and necessary to the world.
It is an interesting phenomenon that in our culture those that clearly express their uniqueness are honored as celebrities of one kind or another.
We can see this in our highly paid actors and athletes. The more uniquely that they express themselves, the more attention and money we shower on them. Even those unique individuals such as artists, writers, and thinkers that we may not shower celebrity status or money on, we celebrate and remember in other ways.
The opposite is true in our daily lives. We try to fit in. We follow those with more authority. We stifle the creative and thoughtful desires to live our lives differently. This is hard to do. It is much harder too live the wrong life, than it is to live our life as our unique qualities.
This is like my mother’s spoon trying to live life as a fork. Why not let life be easy? Why not live who you really are, knowing that those that a need for your type of spoon, will appreciate, love, honor, and support your intent and purpose.