Читать книгу FUDDLE CUP - Dolores McKay - Страница 6

“It is impossible to empty or fill the contents of one of the cups without doing the same to each of the remaining cups — Just like your life.”

A Fuddle Cup is not an actual cup. I coined the concept to demonstrate how the different aspects of life spill over into each other and act as one. My inspiration was based on the antique English drinking vessel, the fuddling cup.

The word ‘fuddle’ means, to muddle or confuse — which is why people say they are befuddled when they are utterly confused or perplexed.

A fuddling cup is a three-dimensional puzzle in the form of a drinking vessel comprised of three or more cups linked together. Upon first glance, it appears the cups are totally separate. In actuality, the bodies of each cup are connected to each other with clever tubes or holes.

An English cultural phenomenon between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, a fuddling cup was offered in jest as a challenge to drink from one cup, without spilling the contents of the others. Sometimes, each individual cup was filled with a different libation to be discovered by the drinker as the contents of one cup flowed into the next.

The series of cups communicate at their bottoms with passages in such a way that the entire vessel can be drained from any individual cup. Because of the clever connectivity of the cups, it is impossible to empty or fill the contents in one of the cups, without doing the same to each of the remaining cups — Just like your life.

There it is, Kids — the whole point. What gets poured into one aspect of your life will eventually flow into all others. Likewise, it is impossible to draw from a singular area in your life without extracting from all the others.

Every person has his or her own Fuddle Cup, more commonly referred to as their life. Everybody faces the awkward task of trying to drink, fill, and balance their cup. Every day, whether we are conscious of it or not, we clumsily tilt our Fuddle Cup this way and that — attempting to draw out different parts of life effectively.

We strive to drink the most out of life while we accidentally and unavoidably spill all over ourselves. We unwelcomingly splash our carelessness on everyone around us. It is a befuddling process, indeed.

Life is a Fuddle Cup — with its interlaced and individual aspects that inevitably, affect one another. Everybody constantly struggles to balance it. Every day, we drink a little or a lot, spill a little or a lot, and win or lose the challenge set before us.

No one is immune to it. Everyone gets sloshed in their own spillage on a regular basis. All people find themselves dealing with the dilemma of drinking from their Fuddle Cup without drowning in it, and will continue to do so for the rest of their lives.

Kids — everyone has a drinking problem…of sorts.