Pot-Luck

While Forrest Gump may believe that life is like a box of chocolates, and Harry Potter fans may equate it to a bag of many flavored jelly beans, I think of it more as a communal pot-luck dinner.

We each bring a dish to pass. Whatever we feel at the moment. Some have time or the desire to put a great deal into our dish and others just stop at the local grocery for pre-made cakes or a bag of chips. Then we gather, throw the food and beverage on the table(s) and feast. Most of the time you can identify the dish in front of you. However, there are plenty that are unveiled and while they are colorfully presented, you really have no clue what you are getting into when you put a scoop on your plate.

The interesting part of the exercise is how much faith you put in

a) the person who brought the mystery dish;
b) your personal ability to guess at its contents: and
c) your ability to savor whatever it may hold

I believe this is a pretty good analogy for life. Unless you are a hermit. Then you can pretty much rest assured that you know what you are heaping on your plate as you are the only one making the dishes. Of course this leaves you in the precarious position of being the only one providing sustenance at your table. I don't think I would recommend this for more than a few weeks of meditative cleansing of the mind.

As we move through the world around us we have these "pot-lucks" through out our days. Many of these meals are people we already know and even more with random encounters. Like when we meet the person in the grocery store line who happens to be a few cents shy of their purchase, we are part of their "pot-luck" moment, we can participate in the feast or just watch. When we converse with the harried flight attendant we are each bringing a dish to pass. It could be we are offering up something savory and worthwhile in the karmic calories to be consumed. Or we could be the high lard content that most people should or do want to avoid.

I try to keep this in mind when I drag my troubles behind me, so I can avoid adding them to the recipe when I put my dish on the table for those I interact with. Not an easy task, we are indeed human, and what we are feeling tends to spill over into the soup. However, karma is an active ingredient and it does help to try to keep yourself in balance when you join in the daily feast.

Just recently I lost my glasses in a frantic day. I was definitely working in hypermode - and they just seemed to get away from me. Normally this would have been something that really impacted my frame of mind (not in a good way). But at the point of their departure from my life,so much else had been served, so many good, healthy servings that I thought - its okay - they will surface or I will just get another pair - life is still good. Then the camara when haywire at an important event. Somehow, again, it was easy to just let it go. It would get fixed or replaced. And guess what, the glasses were rescued and the camara "rested" and is now fine.

What I brought to the feast that day was a willingness to let it ride. I added a healthy dose of life is good, let's just keep dancing to the side dish I brought to the party. And the people around me responded with rescuing my glasses and jiggling the right buttons etc. on the camara, to make the rest come together. This is a rather mundane example of what I am trying to get at. - But it sort of works. When you make your daily dish from the negative, that's probably what is going to end up on your table. When you deliberately choose to add the positive and leave the negative out - somehow more positive seems to flow into the feast.

This is good for you and even better for those you surround yourself with. So if you really want a day out for a bit of grousing and rolling around in the trauma and drama department, you may want to make that your hermit day. Then bounce back to feast when you are ready to dish up, if not your best, than at least a tasty treat to pass. At the very least try not to bring dairy that is out of date...........

And as Forrest says so often, "That's all I have to say about that."