The story of the man and the cup
You wake to a new day.
The day is new, but the feeling in every part of your body is old.
A deep, ingrained thirst to feel okay. You’ve known this feeling intimately for a long time, and logic tells you it’s temporary. A simple cup of water should fix it.
The logic checks out—water = no thirst.
You head to the kitchen and check the cupboard. No cup.
Expected, but still distressing.
So you apply the resourcefulness you’ve built over a lifetime of knowing this feeling. You’ll use your hands, cup the water and sip from there.
You turn on the tap.
Nothing comes out.
Not surprising; maybe the bill isn’t paid.
You check the fridge for something bottled. Nothing there either.
You try the bathroom, thinking maybe the kitchen was an anomaly. You turn the handle.
No water. Makes sense.
The desperation starts rising. Anxiety starts building inside of you.
Another day this thirsty is not an option. You need relief, and you need it now.
Then, in the distance, a sound.
It’s raining.
That same resourcefulness kicks in and sends you running. Out the door, into the front yard, head tilted back, mouth open to the sky.
A few drops hit your lips.
Not enough. Never enough.
You’re trying, and you’re still failing.
Exhausted, you decide sleeping the rest of the day might be the only way to conserve what energy you have left.
So you go back to bed. Maybe tomorrow will be different.
The next day arrives.
Same feeling. Same thirst.
But you can hear the rain belting down outside, heavier than yesterday, and something like hope flickers in you.
You skip the kitchen. Skip the bathroom. Not worth the disappointment (again).
You burst through the front door with your head back and start moving frantically, trying to catch what’s falling.
Some drops graze your face. Some hit your lips.
The vast majority miss.
Hope starts waning. You start oscillating side to side, more desperate with every pass, and the more you move, the more you miss.
How? How can it be this hard to quench this thirst?
You’re about to give up again.
And then, as you turn to go inside, you see him.
A man across the street. A neighbour you’d never noticed before.
Standing in his yard, in the same rain.
But something is different.
He looks calm. Content. At peace.
You’re confused, then curious, then incredibly intrigued. You need to know how anyone could be standing in all this and not be falling apart.
What am I missing? you think to yourself.
As you get closer, you see he’s holding something.
A cup.
It’s full, and he’s sipping from it, easily, like it’s the most ordinary thing in the world. No thirst. No distress. No frantic clutching for comfort. Just standing, and sipping.
“Where’d you get that cup?”
“I made it myself.”
“You can do that?” you ask in shock.
“Of course.”
He looks at your empty hands, and his face softens.
“I used to be like you. Waking up desperate. Thinking one day the thirst would just stop on its own. I tried everything.”
“Nothing lasted. Not for any amount of time that mattered.”
“So I made my own cup.”
“Took a while. The first few attempts had holes in them. But eventually I worked out a design that held up.”
He lifts the cup to show you its contents, and gestures for you to take it.
“Here, take a sip; I have plenty.”
You accept the cup with both hands, put it to your lips, trying not to spill any. Then gently pull the cup closer as you tilt your head back.
The water hits your lips and slides down your throat.
Beaming with excitement and possibility, you hand it back.
Satiated, for now.
“Thank you,” you say sheepishly to someone who owed you nothing, yet was more than happy to share this precious gift with you.
“You’re more than welcome.”
“Learning that it is possible to make your own cup is one thing, but actually making it is an entirely different prospect. After years of trial and error, I finally found a design that worked for me. Now I take it everywhere.”
“And now I don’t go a day without filling it.”
Moral of the story
Alright, so here’s the lowdown…
The rain (love, rest, kindness, support) was always falling. It comes to everyone equally, all the time. Love is abundant, if you are looking in the right places.
The problem was never supply.
The problem was that you had nothing to catch it in.
And that, well, that is what self-love actually is. Self-love is not bubble baths, skin care routines, affirmations and shopping sprees. It’s the slow, methodical work of building a version of you that is worth loving and who is capable of receiving the gifts that life gives us.
Self-love is erecting boundaries that hold.
A sense of worth that doesn’t leak.
The ability to receive a compliment or affection without deflecting it.
Most of us go through life, either too lazy or too busy to actually build something that can hold the love. Instead, we spend our lives running around with our mouths wide open, hoping that the right job, right partner, new gadget, fun hobby, exciting city or obsession will finally be the thing that quenches it.
It never is—because you never built anything to hold it.
On sharing the cup
Circling back to your neighbour…
Notice that he wasn’t hoarding the water.
He wasn’t rationing or guarding it. He wasn’t gatekeeping the secret to himself. He was generous.
He shared the gift, and the path to get to it.
He could only do that because his cup was full.
You see, a thirsty person has nothing to offer anyone because they’re too busy surviving. A thirsty person is frantically trying to wet their lips. Anxiously running around, attempting to catch water in their mouth, too busy to notice you doing the same.
That’s scarcity. It’ll make you very selfish, very quickly.
The abundant person, however, is generous with their time and resources.
And that’s the point.
We look at self-love as this overly indulgent act. This selfish thing that people do instead of being there for you.
The reality is that self-love, friendship and love are the opposite.
Have you ever tried to pour from an empty cup?
Yeah, not very efficient.
If your cup is not full, how can you possibly share anything with friends and family? Even more importantly, if you don’t have a method for collecting and storing water, how will you even see the desperation in others?
You won’t. You will be too focused on your own thirst.
Desperation makes the world shrink, and it puts you at the centre of that world.
Your selfishness and desire to be satiated become paramount. The needs and desires of those around you bear no meaning.
Every person you love is actually relying on you to build the cup.
Your family needs you to share some water when life takes one of those tragic turns.
Your mate needs you to have one so that you have something to give at 2 am when they call you and confess that they have lost theirs.
Your partner needs you to be able to hydrate yourself so that you’re not constantly draining their supply. Your child needs you to have a cup so that one day you can show them what it looks like and how to make their own.
Build your own cup.
Not because you deserve it, even though you do.
Build it because you are surrounded by people standing in the same rain, desperately trying to find a way to hydrate themselves, and one day they are going to walk across the road and ask you where you got the cup.
And you’re going to tell them.
That’s it from me this week, gang.
With gratitude,
SAV
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Every week I show up and write the truth about the work — building yourself, holding the line, and having something left to give.
PS. A few people recently asked about my gratitude journal, so if you would like to check out the journal, do so by clicking 👉 here