If you haven’t already figured it out yet, I am a bit weird, to say the least. But don’t judge me on the back of the images in this blog. There is a perfectly logical explanation.
You see, I was on my way back from Walmart yesterday, laden with groceries. Carrying them up from the car to the house, I chose the “lazy man’s load” as my Dad used to say. Twelve Walmart bags in your hands while trying to fumble with a key in a door-lock is a recipe for disaster and sure enough one fell.
And no surprise, it was the one with the eggs!
I mean seriously … there were eleven other bags and not of them had something that would break from a small fall. But, as Murphy forecast many moons ago, it will always be the bag with the eggs.
When I climbed back down from the ceiling and inspected the bag, nine were fine but there were three casualties. One was really quite smashed and the other two a little bit so.
Now, if I had wanted fried eggs or an omelette, it wouldn’t have mattered but boiling smashed eggs for an egg-sandwich would be rather messy, to say the least.
So, I put them to one side as a little idea began to play out in my head. The old saying “you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs” ran around in my head and given that I am in the middle of trying to create a series of smalls ads, I came up with a plan.
I hopped back in the car, smashed eggs in their box and camera by my side and raced off down to a Publix shopping center just down the road.
For the next few minutes, there I was at one end of the parking lot; an old man squeezing eggs in his hands in the middle of the rain. If there were men in white coats around, I was definitely in trouble. They would have had all the ammunition they needed to take me away.
Anyway, here are some of the pics I got at the end of the blog. I know, I know. I already told you I was a little weird.
I did end up with one that played out well for the ad, so the end purpose justified the strange situation I found myself in. And before anybody accuses me of utter waste, you should know that just off camera under my hand, they all oozed back into the egg box itself. And they were happily eaten by some possums overnight. So, nothing was wasted.
So really the whole point behind this blog was not so much to impress anyone with my manly hand crushing some jumbo sized eggs.
No. What occurred to me was the significance of that old saying about omelettes and eggs.
I looked up the origins and, believe it or not, it was attributed to François de Charette, who was a lieutenant general in the anti-republican army that was defeated in France in 1796. At his point of execution he was asked how he could justify so many deaths because of his actions, wherein he conjured up the quote that you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs.
He was either quite a philosopher at 32 or perhaps just a simple chef, but his words still survive today and have been used in many situations across the world.
My simple interpretation of these words is that in order to achieve anything of significance, some sacrifices are inevitable. And that is what I wish to talk about here.
Many of us go through life wishing and hoping for success in something, yet doing little to secure it. Whether it be a career, a financial purpose, a love, an experience, a talent … whatever it is, it nearly always has a cost associated with it.
If something took no effort to secure, then it likely has no value. Anything of value will likely require us to extend ourselves in order to achieve it.
So, on one hand I look at people who go through life feeling entitled to things and I shake my head. Much of youth culture is such, but inevitably they seem to grow out of it. Life’s experiences tend to educate them in the principle of earning achievements.
On the other hand, I see others that are so focused on achievement to where they barely notice the sacrifices they are making or worse still the sacrifices of those around them. These people step on others and even themselves in order to achieve their goal. And again, I shake my head.
While achievements are important, it is more important to create a balance in our lives. A balance that forces us to examine what we are working towards and what we give up in the process.
When we give up those that love us, we fail them and we fail to find that balance. When we give up our souls, we fail our very humanity.
There are so many examples and I am sure we have all witnessed many along the way. A couple of years ago an ex-sibling sold her mother into a nursing home for $32,000 so she could buy more gin and adorn her twisted body with fur coats.
And look at evangelical Christians, selling their very savior in order to put a pussy-grabbing molester in the White House for a more conservative supreme court.
In both instances, they each explain away that sacrifices have to be made. They agree on the premise that “the end justifies the means”.
And I disagree violently with that.
The end never justifies the means. The means must be able to stand in the daylight and justify itself.
Isn’t it ironic that in almost all instances where sacrifice is freely given, the sacrifice is done by others?
Every now and then, we see the opposite; that moment where someone sacrifices themselves for someone they love. It can be on a grand scale, where they jump in front of a bullet, or on a less obvious level where they forego their own comforts in order to put their kids through school.
For everything in life, something has been sacrificed and in order for us to understand its value, we need to recognize the sacrifice.
Such recognition not only helps us respect the achievement but it can also remind us of the balance required to truly live a happy life.
Happiness is not in the achievement but in the balance.
… just a thought!
