A granddaughter recently shared with me the story of spilled coffee. It went something like this: You are holding a cup of coffee in your hand. Someone bumps into you, and the coffee spills. Did the coffee spill, or did the contents of the cup spill? That is the deeper question of this story.
In writing about nonviolence in The Yamas & Niyamas, I used the example of paint. I shared that “we would never purchase a can of red paint and expect it to be the color blue when we apply it to our walls. And yet we can be so harsh and demanding with ourselves and then expect to be loving with others. It just doesn’t work that way.”
We long for our world to be a peaceful, safe place, yet we paint it with the anger, impatience, anxiety, fear, and self-hatred that too often sit inside us. And then we conveniently look for someone else to judge and blame.
And here is the glitch. It’s too easy to look at others. And it’s too easy to lie to ourselves. The real enemy is not others; the real enemy is the unexamined stuff that sits inside of us.
I have a good friend Roger, who leads trance dances. If you are unfamiliar, people are blindfolded and dance with great abandon because they can only feel what is wanting to express itself inside. As the music pounds its beat, inviting deeper expression, the dancers are protected by spotters. The spotter’s job is to make sure the dancers are safe. But there are always small mishaps, as dancers, unable to see, bump into each other.
I tell this story having been both a blindfolded dancer and a spotter on several occasions. What I remember as a spotter is watching dancer’s reactions when they were bumped. In that moment they were surprised, and their inner process was interrupted. Some of them were blatantly annoyed, while others giggled at the surprise.
We are the paint cans painting the world with what is inside us. What sits in our hearts, the words and emotions that come out of our mouths, these are the things that color this world.
We are the cups spilling our contents when we are unexpectantly bumped into. What sits in our hearts, the words and emotions that come out of our mouths, these are the things that spill out of us into this world.
What color is your paint can? What is your cup filled with?
