Filled To The Brim

Have you ever poured your cup of coffee and thought, “Well, there’s just a bit left in the pot, so let me pour the rest of it in my cup?”

You fill that cup to its very brim. It teeters a bit. Then, magically, it holds. Of course, now you’ve got to pick it up and walk with it and that’s another story altogether, isn’t it?

It’s a lot like life. We’re all carrying around these cups that are filled to the brim. How do you walk around with that? Do you stare at it and walk very, very slowly? Do you look away (as many You Tube videos suggest) and just walk normally, knowing it’ll find its own level and so will you? Either way, you probably leave a trail of coffee along the way; something you have to clean up before you get to drink that coffee, which will probably be cold by the time you get to drink it.

How is it possible that we Humans cannot walk with a cup of coffee without spilling it? It’s like asking, “Why is the sky blue?”

It turns out that Human stride has almost exactly the right frequency to drive the natural oscillations of coffee when the coffee is in a typically sized coffee mug. That’s physics.*

The sacred is our Human propensity to take on more than we can without spilling. Filling our own cups to the brim and then going through life, spilling every step of the way. Have you ever heard someone order coffee who requests that the Barista leave room for the cream? Ah, there’s another moment to ponder. Who is this person at your local coffee shop who’s discovered the secret to life itself - leave room for the cream? Even if you take your coffee black, you’ve got to be impressed.

What does it mean to leave that little bit of room in the cup? What does it mean to walk and leave room for the oscillation in the cup … or your life? It’s a lesson worth learning.

* https://www.livescience.com/20246-coffee-spill-walking.html