When we buy electronic appliances, we receive instruction manuals. To ease the use. To helps us make the best use of our new gadgets.

When we try a new recipe, we look for ingredients and further we carefully follow the guidance that comes with that recipe. And at the end, we gladly enjoy a new dish or a new dessert being proud of what we did and of what came out of the oven or out of the frying pan.

And to keep the cooking analogy, I wondered if out there we can find a recipe for our life.

No, life doesn’t come with a recipe. You have to write down your own.

Life gives us lots of ingredients. Ingredients that most of the time we do not choose. So, we have to juggle. Life forces us to be creative and make the best dish out of a shopping list we did not write.

No, life doesn’t come with a recipe. You have to write down your own. Even if you try to cheat and copy what was done before, is still your pick. Is your turn to make a mix. Give it a try. Taste it. Make adjustments. The first attempt might come out bitter. And because you are a chef, you think you know how to give it more flavour. So you spice it up. Mix up the ingredients again. You give it more time and one more try. Sometimes the results are too sour, or to bitter or far too spicy for our taste. Sometimes you have to spit out the first bite you take. But because is your own recipe, you chew it up. And swallow it, as you were the one cooking it up. And in the process, you get more than just one burn. But you accept the marks, because you want to see what will come up, and take the scars as a reminder of what you’ve been cooking up.

And you try a new mix again with ingredients you didn’t choose. And to your surprise sometimes the results are far better then you expected. And you forget the bitter taste. And you think you figured it out. How to trick with the ingredients you didn’t choose. You created a fancy dish out of far too many lemons and far less honey. And it worked out fine. And that’s how you keep going. In the hottest kitchen, with the worst ingredients, creating what you think is a piece of art.

And as soon as you manage to catch your breath, you receive again the new batch of supplies. So you’re forced again to be creative, to find the right proportions, the right balance between the sour and the sweet, between the raw and the overcooked, between the icing on the cake and a far too burned steak.

And at the end of the day, you look around in your own kitchen, at your own life, and smile. Smile with pride and being proud. You did your best with the ingredients you didn’t choose. You made the best you could and you made the best mix that could come out of something you didn’t choose.