An Overflowing Cup | Lydia Yang Life Reflections and Short Stories

An overflowing cup

When was the last time you have pictured a sight, of a cup overflowing.

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Imagine a cup, filling up slowly, the water level edging to the brim, and then when it looks like the water cannot hold anymore, it then just tips over from a corner, and flows down and onto the surface..

This image came to my head today as I was chilling in our apartment/ home in Ho Chi Minh on a Sunday afternoon. It is pouring like crazy outside, and you can hear the rain falling heavily on the tin and aluminum roofs of the apartments all around us.

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The sound of rain always gives me a sense of peace and comfort, especially when I am all dry and sheltered indoors, and just hearing the humming sound of rain falling on the surfaces it touches outside.

It made me reflect a bit on my day, my life thus far. Sundays have always been a day I try to force time to just relax and reflect – church in the morning, pick up a book to read a few chapters, and then if I can muster up time, to pick up my pen and journal.

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But today is a bit different, I felt compelled to switch on my laptop and write this down. And the image in my head that I want to record down is – a picture of a cup overflowing, endlessly and smoothly.

So, here’s a question..

How often in your life do you feel like your life blessings and riches it is like a cup overflowing…

Brimming to the top and too much to the point you overflow out..

In the past 30 years of my life, it was actually never the case for me..
I have always felt that I was a cup that is still being filled up, with a nice quantity of water in doubt, but never a full glass.

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When I was young, it was all striving.
I strived to earn a good salary and growing my savings, then it felt like my life was a glass half full and needing so much more to reach the top.

Then, as I start making more money and spending more too, there will be be times where I feel my life cup is fuller and more at ease. There will even be times where the speed of the water filling up my cup increases, at other times it slows down.

And then quite a few times, in fact in the revent months, I feel like my cup is not getting filled up.

It was getting a slow tiny stream of water coming in, but then it stopped, and then the water is left there stagnant for 1-2 months, and then it starts going down; and down and down.

And that’s a scary thought.

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The thought of your glass of water going down, drying up without replenishment. It feels like you are slowly losing your life resource, and as it depletes, you find it hard to imagine what its like to have it filled up again, and what more to the brim again…a full good cup.

Yet today, as I hear the rain going on outside, I get a sudden strange image and vision in my head.

It was of a long glass pitcher cup, those you see in hotel rooms where you put your toothbrushes.

In my head, I had an image of a long cup and it is filled with clear crystal water. Perhaps the sound of the falling rain outside has conjured this image. As the water in cup is getting filled up to the brim, the source doesn’t stop, it continues and continue..and the water hits the top, and then it overflows out; coming out from all sides and covering over the floor that cup is on. And it still doesn’t stop, the clear crystal water just keeps flowing and flowing, and it stretches to the grass patch and onto the rivers and drains..the endlessness of it is just unbelievable.

And I suddenly realised. Wow. That’s what I have in my life.
My current life…
Has been equated to a cup overflowing and overflowing…

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I gave it some thought..
I have so much
I have been given and blessed with so much little things that I take for granted, and then now I suddenly realised that all these little things are just so much blessings and countless riches that I never knew I had.

  • The comforts of a dry house indoors, warm bed while it rains outside.
  • The comforts of having a sunday where I can decide if I want to rest or work. The ability to decide.
  • A partner by my side who assures me he will support and be with me through it all, even though I see the daily flaws and weakness (as part of each one of us, me including)
  • The opportunity to work from Ho Chi Minh.
  • The opportunity to have an avocado fruit shake for 1.50USD, much cheaper than Singapore.
  • The opportunity to even indulge in a fruit shake, where 1.50USD is considered something I can indulge in.
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These little little things we take for granted.

  • Dry feet
  • Being able to taste the sweetness of a cold fruitshake in our lips.
  • Having a nice bed to rest in and snuggle in when I want to.
  • Having the thought of being able to cook and eat something I like later..green curry chicken.

There is so much I am blessed with, yet the weeks before, I was only thinking of how much I lacked.

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  • Lacking a steady income stream
  • Lacking enough money to fill up the dipping amount from not earning a steady income the past 6 months
  • Incurring expenses
  • The stress of my skills becoming irrelevant
  • The worry I cannot afford the comforts I like
  • The worry about how I can talk to my family or my friends about my current unstable income stream.
  • The worry that not earning steadily is a problem with me, and what I am doing now is a mistake
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But yet, today, I stop and reflect on what I have, what I am blessed with, what little things I have that the Vietnamese housekeeping lady downstairs does not have, like a room to sleep in (she sleeps behind the guesthouse receptionist on a mattress with a fan next to her).
And she only has a tiny small little kitchen under the staircase ( like a Harry Potter room attic) to cook her food and store her stuff.
Yet every day when we meet her, she smiles at us all the time, she is hardworking and she lives her life with what comes along.

So today is a great day to reflect on what we all have in our lives, the smallest of things.
The little precious comforts and joys.
The smile on our face when we know we can indulge in something we like.

No matter what you are going through in your life, remember that your cup overflows.

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Even if it does not equate to thousands of dollars coming into your pocket, it overflows with the tiniest things, the little wins and little pleasures of life we take for granted, like the sun on our faces and the breeze around the corner of the street.

Our lives has so much beyond what we can fantom.



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