What does a discarded coffee cup say?

Gordie Jackson
3 min readJul 8, 2017

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gjphoto 717

I am running behind myself as usually I have written before midnight and submitted to Hope and Dreams. My body knocked me out and I awoke at 3 00 am only to put myself to bed.

It is 08 53 hrs and as Iowa is 6 hours behind I know if I submit this in the next hour Erika Sauter the editor may not notice.

I didn’t get to the book group tonight ( remember I am writing as if it is still Friday). Prioritising writing every day means that some things are getting knocked into second place. This tells me how integral daily writing is now to my life. Yes, as I have probably said, I wonder how long I can sustain it though that is not important what is important is that I am doing it now, today.

The encouragement from you guys buoys me as if I were a long distance runner.

I was saying to Erika the other day that the discipline of daily writing brings with it a full life. I read a tip from another writer who said, “If you can’t find anything to write about go out there and find something to write about.”

It does seem to have the effect similar to an accountant adding up her monies that I pay more attention to the life I am living and bizarre to say value the gift of life. Could it be if I have nothing to write about at the end of the day I am not paying enough attention, I am not valuing this force that animates me. If we were cartoons characters are we static on the page or are we Tom and Jerry.

In my time with Catholics, I noticed that they often pray for a Grace. I have never understood fully what this means though on one occasion when I was leading prayers and came to, “ We pray for the grace to…..” I couldn’t think of what to say when ‘the grace’ we said before school dinners came to mind,

“For what we are about to receive may the Lord makes us truly thankful.”

So I said it and in doing this I probably for the first time in my life understood what ‘grace’ meant. Since then I often say it not often in relation to food but life itself.

So at the start of each day we can say it and be thankful for the day ‘we are about to receive.’

I took the featured photo the other day though I was not quite sure why. I happened to be showing a friend some photos on my phone and this one popped up, he asked, “Why did you take a photo of a takeaway cup?”

I answered, “It reminded me of how once something was useful though once we get what we want we discard it.”

It may seem simple but the cup deserved to be placed in a bin not just cast aside as the last drop of coffee was drunk. It can feel like that for us sometimes that once people have gotten what they want from us we our cast aside.

We can assure people that we are grateful for what we have received from them and honour appropriately what they have given us with a genuine ‘thank you’.

See you tomorrow, ( or more honestly later today) hopefully,

g.

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Gordie Jackson

Speaks with a Northern Irish accent, lives in Hertfordshire, England.