Cheesy Story

Recently, my goal was to make marscapone cheese, (Italian cream cheese), heavy cream, and ghee. They all seemed simple, required 2 ingredients at most, and didn’t take much time. I went to work on the ghee first, since I used to make that and knew it was simple. As expected, that worked fine.The heavy cream was also a success. 🥳Marscapone called for heavy cream in the recipe, so I did that next.Insert deflating sound…

🎬Take 1: totally flopped. Nothing wasted, I thought. I had buttermilk I could use for other things.

🎬Take 2 *looked like* it flopped so again- ❌I poured my failure into the same glass old-school style soda bottle as the first fail and doubled my buttermilk supply. 🙁Fast forward to the next morning. I was in the middle of making pancakes, reached for what I thought was the bottle of buttermilk and realized-  it was not buttermilk. It solidified over night. 🤦‍♀️

I had managed to trap cheese in a soda bottle. Leave it to me! 🤣

You know the saying from the Good Book about it being easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle?

When Thomas Edison was working on the light bulb, he failed thousands of times. The way he talked about it though: “I didn’t fail. I just found 1001 ways how not to do it.” I am going to claim the same mindset. I didn’t fail. In fact I succeeded! I failed to get the finished product out of the bottle and use it though. (Casualty: one bottle.)

I am not sure what your life looks like. I don’t know if you have moments you feel like a failure – or you are winning at the wrong game. I know how both can be. I have not successfully achieved everything I have set out to do. There are other things I have put a lot of time and energy into and I wonder – why? What was that for? Extracting the purpose from the experiences in a positive light is sometimes as easy as getting cheese out of a glass bottle. I understand the frustration and the pain.

I want to remind you though, that nothing you have been through (or may be going through) is lost or wasted. As long as you are willing to learn from the experience and pass on what your wisdom is about it (if given the opportunity), you have not failed.

A lot of people like to say “Everything happens for a reason.” I’m careful to throw that one around. I also do not find it helpful when I am in the thick of something difficult.

What I have found is when life is throwing punches and curve balls, most people want presence and empathy, prayers/well wishes – and a good sense of humor helps too. They are not looking for advice or how-tos. If someone you know needs a chuckle today, feel free to send them my buttermilk story!

What did you perceive as failure or a waste, that later revealed itself to be helpful wisdom for you or someone else?

If you are enduring something difficult now, how can you re-frame the circumstance to be something *em*powering versus dis-empowering?

More on failure coming soon. For now, I will leave you with thoughts of marscapone and buttermilk, purpose and empathy. 😉

PS, it is amazingly simple to make your own cheese at home. No special tools needed.