‘The’ Cup

One day,

I decided that I needed a certain cup. I wanted it, sure. But a decision was made one day, that the want had ascended into a need. A certain cup was needed. Period.

A journey ensued in phases, the first being misinformation – a plain white cup as seen in almost every stock photo showing up when I searched for coffee was easy to find. I started by looking for it at a nearby store. Then a bigger store further away, then another one, then online. I just couldn’t find the words that I needed to enter into Amazon’s search bar for it to return the cup that I wanted. And please note, I consider myself quite good with words.

The next phase was astonishment – at how hard it could be to find a cup that had no design, no print, little capacity and littler practicality. My search at this point had spanned across 3 cities, over 10 stores, a score of pages scraped on e-commerce websites and 3 cups that came close to the description, but not enough. Also, 2 years passed.

I was now in the phase of acceptance – that some things couldn’t be attained by trying harder. I pictured Akshaye Khanna’s character – Siddharth,  from the 2001 classic, Dil Chahta Hai – explaining this to me using his sand in the palm metaphor. I stopped trying to find my cup.

Then came a day, as randomly as the day when this journey had begun. I was in a mall with some agenda. I happened to cross a store whose branches I had already scraped through in my now given-up-on endeavor. The cup was there. In fact, it was the first piece of crockery I saw when I entered. To add to this, there were two different variants of the same kind of cup. Before I even walked into the store, I knew that this day was to be the day when my search would’ve ended. I knew that the store had the cup.

When I was trying too hard to find it, I was willing to spend over INR 1000/- on a single cup, if it fit the description. This cup, which fit every letter in the description was priced at 1/4th that price. I bought it before this string of events could’ve turned out to be a dream. I exited the store, the journey and a lesson that I had been in the process of learning.

The moment I stepped out of the store, as a proud owner of The Cup, I crossed the final checkpoint of this journey – realisation. I didn’t use to believe that destiny has dictated what’s going to be of our lives; I still don’t. But, I learned the truth of time. That some things aren’t transactional, in terms of effort. There are things that do not come in exchange of consistent, brute effort. Some require for you to want them long enough for them to come to you. I never stopped wanting the cup, and when it was time, it came to me effortlessly.

If you too want something badly (read: desperately), but have been failing to ‘achieve’ it with efforts, maybe you should try to stand your ground whilst keeping the desire alive.

Maybe what you seek is indeed seeking you.

P.S. Here’s the cup ❤️