Today, I’m thinking about how so much of what constitutes as our emotions and attitudes is self-imposed. If you find someone in an angry mood, it’s because they’ve chosen to be angry. The world did not decide to make events occur to invoke their wrath on this particular day. Whatever makes someone angry is just an experience. Someone may have yelled at them or rear ended them or bumped into them spilling their vanilla bean frappuccino (is that a thing?). And they responded by being angry.

I once read this analogy which explains it really well. Imagine you are walking with a hot cup of coffee and someone bumps into you. Your nice shirt is ruined and all thanks to the person who bumped into you, right? Think on this, what if you were carrying cotton balls in a cup instead? Imagine that same scene again. Not as messy of a situation, if you ask me. You could just pick them up and keep on going. Take a last run at the scene, what if your cup was empty? What then?

People bumping into us is life. What we keep in our cup ready to spill out is up to us. It can be hot coffee. It can be cotton balls. Or it could be nothing.

I suppose the question then becomes what do each of us carry in our cups?

Food for thought.