Sometimes ketchup is part of the sofa
On the tyranny of an imagined standard
A few years ago, we found ourselves in Helsinki at the HundrED Innovation Summit — in a room full of people who genuinely, stubbornly believed the world could be better, and were doing something about it.
We did what we always do! Prompt cards on every table that read: “If you could share one life lesson with other educators, what would it be?”
On the bus back to the hotel, we read through the answers. They were thoughtful and moving. Occasionally written by someone who was clearly also trying to finish their dessert!
And then, one card took us by surprise:
“Sometimes ketchup is part of the sofa.”
We never found out who wrote it. They didn’t sign the card. Which, honestly, feels right somehow. Because what they wrote belongs to everyone who has tried to keep something pristine — a dream, a relationship, a version of themselves and discovered that living in that thing changes it.
The ketchup on the sofa goes beyond being a metaphor for failure. It’s a metaphor for having actually sat on the sofa.
We spend so much of our lives protecting the cream-coloured version of things. The version where everything is still possible, still unmarked, still exactly as we imagined. But here’s the thing about cream sofas: nobody really lives on them.
The sofas worth sitting on are the ones with a story in every cushion. The indent from where you always sit. The armrest worn soft from the same elbow, year after year. The stain from that one dinner party that became, somehow, everyone’s favourite story to tell.
And if you look closely, the same is true of everything we’ve actually lived in.
The friendship with the argument woven into it, and the repair that followed. The recipe you burnt three times before it finally became yours. The drawing you gave your teacher with the crooked lines you almost apologised for — and she hung it on the wall anyway.
At some point, most of us realise: none of those are the flawed versions of the thing. They are the thing. We can spend our lives standing over the stain with a cloth, hiding it under a cushion when guests come over. Or we can look at it and think: Right…that happened here… that’s part of this now.
There is a surprising amount of freedom in the second option. Not the freedom of not caring, or of giving up entirely. But the freedom of someone who has made peace with the fact that a life fully lived is going to show it.
Carrying the stains forward,
Team FUEL
PS: Whoever you are, wherever you are — thank you for writing that on a card and leaving it on a table in Helsinki. It got on the bus with us. It’s been travelling with us ever since.