Life is a Kitchen

Our way through this world is like being in a kitchen and achieving a purpose driven life is like baking the greatest pie.

Imagine yourself being in the best-stocked kitchen in the universe. Every single ingredient you could imagine is at the distance of your hands.

All you need to do is figure out what you want to put in your pie.

Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice

The first things you will look for are the basic ingredients of your pie: Some eggs, flour, sugar (maybe you prefer brown sugar), butter, etc. You know, the usual stuff.

Just as our basic needs. We can hardly pay any attention to our personal, emotional or spiritual development, if we have not covered our basic needs: A roof over our head, daily access to food and clean water, physical security, etc.

Once you have your basic ingredients on the table, now you might want to add something special. Maybe you want to make an apple pie, so you go and grab some apples.

Other people might prefer a lemon pie, and that’s why you see some lemons over in a corner. You don’t like lemon pies, but you understand that other people might like it.

Tolerance Is Not Enough

And you carry on with your apple pie. It’s starting to look great. You actually believe this could be the best pie EVER!

At some point in our lives, we have to start making choices on our own. We usually call it “growing up,” but the necessity to make our own choices has nothing to do with age. Many people are forced to make choices at an early age, and some others never fully take the reigns of their lives.

A funny thing happens when we start making our own choices: Suddenly, we become increasingly aware of everybody else’s choices. We start paying attention to what others do, say and choose. And we start comparing ourselves to others and others to ourselves. We start judging.

Now we notice that others are eating lemon pie and we not only wonder why, we also start thinking (even if only to ourselves and on many occasions subconsciously) that they shouldn’t eat lemon pie because we don’t like it…

Mind Your Own Business

Then you think it is a good idea to add a pinch of salt to the pie, so you go and look for the salt. Much to your surprise, when you find the salt, you realize that next to it there is a bottle of black pepper.

And then a thought crosses your mind: “Maybe somebody else might like to put pepper on THEIR pie…”

You don’t like pepper, and you cannot imagine how someone would put pepper on their pie. Who could be that crazy?

You demand an explanation. Who brought the pepper? Why would they do something like that?

Pepper? In an apple pie? No, that’s just not natural. You can tolerate a couple of lemons over in the corner, but pepper? That’s crossing the line; it’s just too much.

You have to get rid of the pepper.

You are in the best-stocked kitchen in the universe. You have access to every ingredient you could imagine and the ability to make the best apple pie in history; yet, there you are: losing your time, fussing around, yelling about who brought the pepper.

How silly does that sounds?

People yell about the pepper every day.

So you grab the pepper, deciding to make that kitchen right. And you are so upset, that you pour some pepper by mistake over your beloved apple pie.

Now your pie is ruined, like the MacArthur Park pie in Donna Summer’s song, and you will never have the recipe again.

It’s all over.

But is not your fault… it’s the pepper’s fault and the fault of those who brought the pepper to the kitchen, right?…

You could have just ignored the pepper. You might not like it, but there was no reason to get mad about it.

Plan YOUR Pie, Not Anyone Else’s Pie

You might have understood that the reason the pepper was in the kitchen was because maybe somebody else would like to put pepper on THEIR pie, which has nothing to do with YOUR pie. Maybe that person doesn’t like apples, yet they don’t demand the banning of apples out of the kitchen.

But that doesn’t matter because YOU ruined your pie, and now is too late.

Life is a kitchen, and you are baking the pie of your life. Plan your recipe carefully, select your ingredients cautiously and pour a lot of passion when mixing. And if you see something you wouldn’t like in your pie, then don’t put it in your pie, but don’t try to forbid everyone else from using those ingredients you don’t like.

And remember, there are others baking their own pie, with their own ingredients, and that has nothing to do with you, and your pie should have nothing to do with theirs.

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Disclaimer 1: I don’t know how to make an apple pie, or any kind of pie for that matter, so the baking of the pie was just an example for the sake of the point.

Disclaimer 2: In the same manner, this article was written in the second person with the sole purpose of illustrating the point.

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