The Significance of Unfinished Water Bottles
My feet are propped up on the desk. I’m leaning back in a chair and my laptop is balanced on my body. Finally, I decide to take a break and close my laptop. The glow from the computer screen vanishes and natural sunlight, pouring in through the windows and penetrating the flowery curtains that cover them, envelop me. This luminosity seems to touch everything in the room, coating each with a veneer that magnify the radiance emanating from other objects.
The room holds its breath.
Bored, I glance around the room. I see books. I see papers stacked on top of more papers. I see pens and pencils scattered on the desk. I see clothes draped over a chair.
I see chaos.
But amongst this chaos, I see water bottles.
There are water bottles everywhere. There are bottles on my desk, some are corpses and lying down and others standing upright to attention like soldiers. There is a land mine spread across my bedroom floor and a front line on my dresser.
Oddly enough, they all have something in common. Each has a small amount of water remaining in themselves, a quantity not large enough to evoke cries about the California drought but sufficient enough to reopen up the “half full half empty” discussion.
I am sitting in the middle of a nature lover’s nightmare. I am manifesting the overexploitation of fossil fuels and I am the cause of global warming. I penetrate the ozone layer by my inability to drink an entire bottle and allow endocrine-disrupting chemicals to harm my body by the ever growing number that I consume.
I am pulsing at the heart of a battlefield of unfinished water bottles.
One unfinished water bottle can be dismissed. It’s trivial and a sample size to be scoffed at. It isn’t capable of declaring any conclusions or propagating further investigation. But my repetitive inability to finish a water bottle, to leave an inexcusable size of water at its bottom, is a pattern that I cannot seem to ignore and a possibility leading to further self discovery.
Are unfinished water bottles capable of telling me more about myself than I already know? Does this battlefield parallel an arena of the inner me?
Can this phenomena elicit more questions, questions that transcend environmental and biological consequences and explore uncharted territory of my character?
Not finishing several water bottles is a very small part of who I am. The act isn’t nearly as revealing in personality as academic performance or leadership capabilities or social interactions with family, friends, and those disliked. It cannot compete with characteristics already self evident.
But the complete identity of a person includes the total sum of its parts, in which the minority is not disregarded despite the dominance of the majority. The immediate defining attribute of a pie is its filling, whether it be apple, blackberry, or peach. However, not even the crust, but the crispiness to which that crust is baked, is an underrated detail that through its complemental relationship with the filling can transform the experience for the eater.
Thus, why, however hard I try, can I never seem to finish such an elementary, “easy as pie” task as drinking an entire water bottle?
I hypothesize that my inability to finish a water bottle is due to more than simply the satiation of my thirst but rather is an indication of my lack of commitment. However, I’d say lack of commitment isn’t directly the sole cause of not being able to finish what I start but instead serves as a contributor to an even greater weakness. This vulnerability being endurance.
Lack of commitment coupled with unsustainable drive results in the abrupt termination of a current ambition. The reason there exists a codependence between these two liabilities is because I picture my excitement as logarithmic. It begins in a negative, almost discouraged state, then fueled by external positive feedback and vision of a certain desired goal, rises rapidly.
Unrestricted, this passion explodes and I dedicate everything I have into this project, academic semester, or book and I am gulping down these first sips of water. But then, I reach this plateau where the energy begins to dwindle into a stagnant and lifeless state.
It cannot rise again.
I am the first one off the blocks when the gun blows, but I struggle to finish ahead as I cross the finish line. I prepare a world winning Toast Masters championship speech, but I cannot deliver it. I am a butcher that holds the knife but cannot execute.
With drops still remaining, I close the lid of the water bottle and set it aside with high hopes of a future rendezvous.
So why? “Why does this happen?”, I ask myself as I sit within my battlefield of lost pursuits.
What is the reason behind this undependable will?
I answer this question with my desire to constantly demand something new, something of a faster pace. When I find the route out of a maze, I don’t follow it out all the way through to see the light and escape the towering walls to break out of that fictitious world. Instead, I demand a new maze, one even more challenging and intricate than the last.
The luster of the current environment disappears with my growing comfort. I become complacent. I crave a fresh start. I crave a new beginning. I desire an arena I have not yet hypothetically conquered.
Conclusion is not a necessity for my satisfaction.
It is interesting to think if others are the same way, if there are also unfinished water bottles cluttering the desks of other people’s rooms, houses, and lives. Because maybe I am overthinking what should really just be a superficial circumstance. Maybe there does not actually exist a mathematical representation of my passion and I merely just enjoy the crisp, fresh water of a new and unopened water bottle.
But, despite all considerations, the ultimate question of whether I can still achieve despite the lack of need for finalization remains. The answer to this fluctuates between the mercurial embodiment of the “half full” and “half empty” mindset.
If I believe I can accomplish, then I will. If I don’t, then I will falter in the face of the finale.
I can override this liability by visualizing the impact that only comes after total implementation. Potential of a purpose is supreme.
Because, then again, it’s only a very small part of who I am.
