When my friend Chris was leaving for his European backpacking trip, our friend Howard gave him a spoon to take with him. I asked him why a spoon and here is what he said (as I understood it):
When we are young and just getting started in life we buy what supplies we can on our limited budget. Cheap silverware, maybe mismatched plates from the thrift store, whatever we need. As we get older, we are able to have more stability and maybe we graduate to a house, car, matching silverware. So the old stuff gets thrown in the back of the drawer.
But every once in awhile, we may have the opportunity to go on a trip or do something that requires packing a lunch and we need to take a spoon with us. We don’t want to risk losing one of our nice pieces, so we grab the old forgotten spoon from the back of the drawer because it is expendable.
We go on our trip, come home, wash the spoon and put it away, back in the forgotten recesses of the drawer. Next time we need an expendable spoon, we grab that one again, and it comes with us on another trip, another adventure.
Over the years, our nice silverware gets used, washed, and put away, but this old spoon gets to go on all the adventures with us, and after awhile, it starts to take on meaning. We start to attach fond memories to it and it becomes more than the old expendable spoon, it becomes the adventure spoon.
That’s why he gave our friend a spoon, to teach him that the ordinary can take on an extraordinary new life.
But every once in awhile, we may have the opportunity to go on a trip or do something that requires packing a lunch and we need to take a spoon with us. We don’t want to risk losing one of our nice pieces, so we grab the old forgotten spoon from the back of the drawer because it is expendable.
We go on our trip, come home, wash the spoon and put it away, back in the forgotten recesses of the drawer. Next time we need an expendable spoon, we grab that one again, and it comes with us on another trip, another adventure.
Over the years, our nice silverware gets used, washed, and put away, but this old spoon gets to go on all the adventures with us, and after awhile, it starts to take on meaning. We start to attach fond memories to it and it becomes more than the old expendable spoon, it becomes the adventure spoon.
That’s why he gave our friend a spoon, to teach him that the ordinary can take on an extraordinary new life.
As I reflected on that story, thinking what a great concept that was, he added: maybe some of us are like that, we are the oddballs, the expendable spoons, but we go on the greatest adventures.
My friend is a genius.
(Clever spoon photo courtesy of Chris Domingo
Spoon story courtesy of Howard Martell)
(Clever spoon photo courtesy of Chris Domingo
Spoon story courtesy of Howard Martell)
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