Surfing with a tea cup

So there you are this wonderful Saturday morning, feeling refreshed and prepped for a lovely day. You decide you will spend some time with your friend who lives not very far away and as you begin the journey at a brisk pace, you cannot help but close your eyes as you bask in the cool freshness of the morning. In a few minutes, you walk through the doors of lovely house that is your friend's abode – and then you pause for a few seconds at the doorway, confused.

The look on your friend’s face is one of total frustration as she tries hard to drink from the coffee pot. She tries again and again…and again and finally, she throws up her hands in frustrations and screams in anger. You are lost for words because, in the first place, you cannot understand why your friend is trying so hard to drink coffee with a thimble.

As you stand there stunned, she finally realizes you are standing there, tries to force a smile and gets to her feet from the stove she is seating on. There is a splintering sound and she screams as the cup she is wearing on her feet give way beneath her weight, breaking into a million pieces on the tiled floor and that is when you rush quickly across the room to set her down, remove the cups from her feet, sit her on a couch and call the maid to bring a mop for the mess made from her attempt to drink coffee with a thimble. For the simple reason of propriety, you do not say “Are you nuts?” Instead, as I believe most of us will say, you look into her eyes and say, “Is everything all right?”

Sitting on a stove in the living room, wearing cups on feet and drinking coffee with a thimble????

Now, as as crazy as that sounds, many of us live our lives in exactly the same way.

Each person has a unique design, a unique background and a unique purpose – or a set of things meant to be accomplished. Created to achieve certain things, life has also created the resource we need for success. Like David in the bible, before a battle with a Goliath, life would throw you into scenarios where you spar with “little” lions and bears. Like Joseph in Egypt, one gets to rule a house first before a nation – but beyond scenarios that train you for what you are meant to achieve, your very personality, preferences, traits and natural affinity are given to you to make things happen.

A line from a movie that sums this up succinctly is: What if Michael Jackson was forced to become a boxer and Mohammed Ali was forced to become a singer?

So what happens when you wear cups as shoes, try to drink coffee with a thimble, try to surf the waves with tea cups, try to stay afloat with a computer, try to use a chainsaw to barb your hair? Strain, frustration and damage would be the final results…and sometimes, even death will be the outcome. It is the reason why many struggle to keep up with office jobs when they should be farmers, the reason why entrepreneurs stay unfulfilled as employees when they have capacity to be employers of labour. Now, there is a place of tenacity to acquire skills and a commitment to delayed gratification in pursuit of a worthwhile objective, BUT it is critical that individuals are aligned (or aligning) with their true purpose as they go about this short project that we call “life”.

It is for this reason that when people “arrive” they still feel empty and those who should be happy that they “have it all” still end up trying to grab as much as they can when they should be content – because they are trying in vain to plug a hole on the inside in ALL the wrong ways. The answer, as always, to finding YOURSELF and aligning with purpose is simply GOD.

When one seeks God, the inner man is refined and one intuitively becomes aware of who they are and what they are meant to do – and find fulfillment when they walk down their unique paths which they have been designed for and equipped with the measures of grace necessary to fulfill purpose.

All else is as futile as attempting to grasp the wind or trying to surf the waves – with a teacup.