Giving Cups

It’s taken me a long time, but I’m finally here: one more comet in the blogosphere.  This has been many months in the making.  After enough prodding from family and friends (feel free to smile, leaha…that was a direct nod at you) and a weekend of serious contemplation and far too many chocolate-covered caramels I decided to go ahead and do it.

So here I sit, typing my life, or at least parts of it.  I live in an enchanted world – usually.  I am prone to flights of fancy; I would like to believe in fairies and sprites and there’s a part of me that’s sure if I step just right I can follow the moonpath across the ocean to a timeless world of nonsense and make-believe.  Don’t get me wrong, though.  For all that my head is in the clouds my feet are planted firmly on the ground.  I know that nonsense is just that: nonsense.  I also know, however, that we all need a little nonsense in our lives. 

Lately, though, my enchanted world, my nonsense, has dimmed.  My mom says I’m walking through a valley right now.  She’s right (figuratively speaking, of course).  But the best way I know how to describe it is by saying that my Giving Cup has a hole in it.

You see, I have a theory that each one of us has something in us, in our souls, the very core of who we are, that allows us to give to others.  Our Giving Cups.  Some of us have big Giving Cups, others have smaller.  Some Giving Cups are shiny and ornate and obvious, and others are simpler, more subtle.  Regardless of what they look like we each have one, and we pour from our Giving Cups into other people – ideally into their Giving Cups so they can give, and so on.  But sometimes our Giving Cups run low.

This can happen for any number of reasons (we’re tired, or hurting, or angry, or we’ve given too much) or it can happen for no reason at all.  When our Giving Cups run low we feel drained and we just can’t give anything anymore.  This is when our loved ones ride to our rescue (hopefully).  They do something to refill our Giving Cups.

Lately, however much my friends and family pour into me I can’t seem to feel full.  I have come to the conclusion that my Giving Cup has a hole.  So I write.  I write to lift the weight from my shoulders.  I write to reopen my eyes to the beauty around me.  I write to mend the hole in my Giving Cup.

And I write to share my crazy life with whomever wants to read it.  So many strange and wonderful and amazing and unbelievable things happen to me that some might think my life is a life of fiction.  And I think they would be right – to a point.

So here’s to exploring the blogosphere together.  Here’s to fixing our Giving Cups.