From Penrith to Sheffield: the journey of an empty paper cup

It was a life changing experience, not that it had set out to be, of course it hadn't. This was a different sort of 'life changing moment' not quite as momentous as passing your A levels, getting married or being fired from your first job, but it did change my life, that paper cup changed my way of thinking in a way that paper cups don't routinely change your life. It was a very ordinary sort of paper cup from a very ordinary sort of coffee shop, contain a certainly not quite upmarket brand of decaffeinated coffee. If anything the decaff coffee had no business being bought, it was too expensive, tasted cheap, plus as British weather goes it was quite a hot and humid day more fitting for cola than coffee. My first encounter with the paper cup was at Penrith Station, not that there were any further encounters after this, but it just sounds better saying it that way. I was on my way to Sheffield with my line Manager, bored, tired and had run out of small talk, After all there is very little to be said to your boss in the way of chit chat least you get carried away and start blubbering on about the 4 day sick leave you took last month when you were quite not so sick but more drunk. Anyway with the chit chat over and done with in the first 3 minutes of us being together, and out of sheer desperation I did what I do best in a crisis,, create a deficit in my bank account, which means in lay mans language shop. Not that you would call buying an expensive substandard coffee at a train station shopping, but that's how the coffee cup started its journey en route to Sheffield. I drank the substandard coffee in two or three gulps not coz it was nice but that it gave me a reasonable excuse why not to engage in small chit chat with you know who. anyway so come Lancaster and all I have left is a empty dirty paper cup and no bin to chuck it in. No bins in the train , no bins at Lancaster train station, no bins when we changed at Manchester Piccadilly and no bins when we change at Stockport. I was desperate to get rid of coffee cup it was just unnecessary excess baggage that I didn't not need. Unnecessary excess baggage that i could do without. It was making it almost impossible to carry all my bags and on occasion when we reached a bumpy stretch it would roll all over the carriage way and i would have to run around looking for it. it started to annoy me this coffee cup, I just couldn't get rid of it. I had no more use of it but still I kept it. I could have chucked it on the floor but i wondered what people would do, what they would say. It was making me miserable but still I hang on to it as if it was a life support machine and my life depended on it. Finally we reach Sheffield after a miserable 4 hour journey on the train. I race to customer services to complain, why I had to be saddled with an unfortunate travel companion when the rail company could just have provided bins . "But madam "the customer service chap said 'you should just have left it at the train platform in Penrith we have cleaners who would just have got rid of it, you didn't need to lug it around totally unnecessary." this got me thinking 'how many coffee cup' do we lug around in our live and simply refuse to put down simply because we don't want to not because we cant? I thought of all the coffee cups i was lugging around past hurts, past mistakes, things i should have done that I didn't and things that i did that i shouldn't. I released that some of the stuff i was lugging around was useless, making me miserable and just excess baggage i didn't need, just like that empty coffee cup. The experience with the paper coffee cup didn't quite change my life but it changed my thinking. It changed the ways I viewed things even about my emotional coffee cups from my encounter with YT, cause i didn't need to carry them round no more. Just as lugging round that coffee cup had been my choice, coz i was afraid of what people would say, i thought i shouldn't i couldn't, that was the same way i was dealing with all my emotional baggage from YT I thought i couldn't chuck it away, i thought i couldn't i just wouldn't......................now i know i can and I have. The journey from Sheffield was much lighter, not only had I chucked the coffee paper cup but all my emotional baggage as well. I feel much happier now, am in a much better place within myself, finally I can honestly say I'm free...........all thanks to an empty paper cup's journey from Penrith to Sheffield.