Glass

When water fills a glass, and it fills that glass perfectly, with no air inside and the water is clear and still and the light is hitting the glass just right — is it not hard to see the water, and the fullness? It looks, from certain angles, as though the glass is empty: not half full, not half empty, not all full. Just empty.

But it’s not. In fact it’s brimming over with water that might spill out at any moment, should the glass shift in the right way. In fact those tiny water molecules are locked in an eternal dance, with one another, spinning about. They will never be still; even frozen, they would still vibrate with unending energy.

Think about the glass. Should it be tipped, the water pouring out, it would still not be empty — not under the circumstances most of us are likely to encounter. The water pours out, yes, but air flows in, filling the space with yet more tiny particles which bounce about freely in that empty-looking space.
The glass is always full, and the tiny pieces that move within it are constantly busy — or at least, they are always doing something — or at least, they are always occupied with some sort of motion.

Sometimes my mind feels like that glass: full of things that buzz about, never stopping, always making some sort of noise. It’s never empty. It’s always in motion. And yet, despite all that energy and motion, it feels like the busier it is, the less it accomplishes.