If life were a cup sat before you to fill and you, as its only drinker, had the opportunity to fill it with whatever you so pleased, what would you put in it, that you yourself must drink? Think about your words, just listen to yourself. (Just saying people, do you really want to ingest all those curse words you deploy, think about it.) Think about your ideas, would you yourself sincerely want that to happen to you personally. Think about your actions, think about your choices, think about your behavior towards others. What would your drink mix consist of if it was your Holy Grail? What did you serve others via word, idea or action, in a moment of haste that was instigated through bias that would become what you yourself must partake of regardless of ingredients? How did you treat others that would become how you are treated? What did you say to others that would become how they now speak of you? Was it a floral pleasantness, was it a calming kindness, was it an aloe of understanding, or was it your limited point of view that you yourself were not included and you were only serving as the harsh, rancid garbage you yourself would never indulge in and only wanted to serve others.
What if it showed up on your own personal palette full of bold, savory flavor, seasoned with your honest intentions implied to life for others with your opinions of them, your words whispered beyond their ears reach away from their knowledge, your simple ignorance, your unknowing, your just for them not for me. What would your actions create for you to enjoy, or deplore, whatever the outcome might be? Would your elixir of life, brewed in you as the only grail, bring a refreshing, healthy, nourishment to you that would satisfy even the most finicky of critiques and feed you the vitality of youth, the happiness of contentment, the pleasure of no harms done that eases all your angst, relieves all your loss and makes new your ambition to be better than before? Or would it taint your entire being with the ill will you have so unknowingly prepared for yourself because you could not see past your own nose for any reason.
I've considered this many times as I lived throughout my life with the knowledge that what I would want would not be the same as others and what others have offered me I would not dare to consume for myself or pass on to another for any reason lest I taint my own cup. That one day in some way, if only through writing them in front of my own eyes, I am forced to partake of my own elixir as if my life depended on it, as a life giving stream from which myself must drink wanting to find unpoisoned the goodness that can survive and readily thrive among all of the heretical harshness that demands so much of our time to give an account of ourselves in so myriad ways.
And you, my dear reader, if you came into my presence needing a life saving substance to heal you of all your toxicities what would you wish to find here? What ingredient in my cup of life thoughts would you prefer for your salve of recovery from your I swear I didn't mean to, I didn't think about it when I did it, that yourself would be its only drinker. What would you want that I could heal in you that I could by some egregious act of simple acceptance take out of your poisonous chalice of living that now consumes you entirely and would you, my dear thinker, give me such a momentous healing if I asked you thus the same? Would we blush with childish innocence at our dependency on each the other knowing we both learned in due time how we would both need my eccentric natural goodness, as the antidote for our healing that I gave through such willing kindness to be remembered when others are forced to taste the bitterness of the mistakes that they spiced their own life drink with so heartily unknowing that it was they who must drink it. Would we then brew a new registry of ingredients from our togetherness that could in fact heal you, sating you from your ill gotten fate where my lack of knowing calmed the seas of your tumultuous storm leaving the waters of our lives in the deepest stillness of forever whole, unable to be tainted in the depths of all our likeness.
I ask you as a friend, may I sip from your cup of life and believe that no harm will be found in it that would destroy my life's enduring quality and only replenish my own lack of provision. Would your cup destroy me? Would my cup harm you? I think of my life this way. I think it so that I might not ever poison myself with the evasiveness of a quick sweetness hiding beneath it a drought of incurable quinine. The Holy Grail of all my living that a lifetime has provided to me as myself who will, one day, even this very day, be its only partaker.
