I’m trying to be quiet, but every morning is like an event. It’s still dark in the house. Everyone else is asleep. I don’t think of it as them taking me for granted. They depend on me to be the first one up. She depends on me, and I want so much to make her day a better one.
My friends, if you can call them that, think I’m crazy. They look at all the work I do and question my happiness. I don’t mind them, though. Their lives are occasional lives. Mostly they sit around useless, waiting for something to happen to give them purpose and remind them that they’re still alive, but that’s not me.
Every day I live my dream. Every day I do what I was made to do, and maybe the world doesn’t see it. Maybe it seems like a very little thing. Maybe it affects only one person, but to me, it’s who I am. And doing what I was made to do and doing it the best way I can makes getting up early in the morning, standing alert all day, and being available when needed at night the most splendid thing in the world to me.
That wooden-slab of a guy who lives behind a closed door taunts me with his latest adventure. He sat next to me and asked me how I could stand to just do the same thing every day. He said there’s a whole world out there. He’d seen it, and I didn’t know what I was missing.
But I wouldn’t change a thing. Isn’t that something special? To be at a place in life of perfect contentment where you wouldn’t change a thing. Maybe it’s not special to someone else, but it’s special to me.
They all grumble about their lives.
“I open cans–that’s nothing.”
“Why doesn’t she drink more tea, so I can whistle?”
“What’s with all this bagged, already shredded cheese?”
But I just sit here, knowing that doing my job pleases her so, and in serving my purpose, I somehow feel completely complete.
Sure, it’s not being part of a diorama and traveling around the local school system like the cutting board did, but it’s important all the same. I’m important, and every day I get better at what I do, more seasoned, more flavorful.
And when the first hints of dawn begin to chase away the night, I hear her coming, shuffling feet headed straight for me.
“Good morning, beautiful,” she mumbles. And I beep back to let her know I’m ready. She breathes in that fresh coffee aroma and smiles, and I know I’ve done a good job.
I know it sounds like I do this just to please her, but I do it for me too. It’s what I was made to do. It makes me happy. So let the others mock me and tell me I should want more. They haven’t discovered this perfect contentment yet, this singularity of purpose. I feel sad for them, but I know I can’t help them find their way. Everyone’s got their own journey to travel in self-discovery. She would help them, if they’d let her, but instead they complain and want more.
It’s an amazing thing to know your purpose, to feel complete, but yet know there’s still so much more to come. I will keep rising early in the morning and filling this home with caffeinated hope. And I will keep looking forward. I am the coffee maker.
