The Glass is Not Half Full, It is Overflowing

Sometimes, small things become big things over time: interest compounds, saplings grow into shade, a trickle of water becomes a valley, thoughts lead to destiny.

Sometimes, you meet someone and they say a small thing that, over time, has a resounding impact on your life, a little thought-seed that keeps growing roots and branches. Someone tosses out a tiny morsel of wisdom you were not expecting to catch, and you hold onto it forever.

Maybe even a chocolate chip morsel.

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I belonged to a women’s community service organization that tor a hundred years or so had been eyes, ears and hands, volunteering in the community, researching ways we could effectively improve the community and then doing what it took to make it happen.

To do this work, we needed money.

One year, I served as the chair for one of our fundraisers, a speaker series. For the previous 30 years, this speaker series had informed and entertained our community, and the sale of tickets brought in the money. Yet, over the last few series, we could see signs of diminishing ticket sales.  Now that people had  access to a hundred television channels, dozens of talk shows, and youtube, why make the effort to go hear a mid-tier celebrity talk, even if it is in person.

Chairing the struggling fundraiser posed a challenge, how could we turn ticket sales around? How could we stir things up? How could we pivot?

It was either spend less and go down market on the speakers we brought in to cash-cow the thing or we could go big. We opted to go big, bigger than we ever had before. I contracted with a world champion athlete to come to town. And then, for ‘reasons’ we cut the contract. It was ‘complicated’ but I knew we needed to cut our losses, forfeiting the deposit. And with that, the fund-raiser became a fund-loser. As chair, I needed to regroup. Quickly.

And that’s how I met Famous Amos. Yes, that Famous Amos. The Amos famous for chocolate chip cookies.

Faced with a disaster of a fundraiser, I needed to do something drastic. And so, I proposed to the Board of the organization that we live our values. Why focus so much on selling tickets; let’s sell our vision for the community. We would narrow our speaker search to focus on individuals who cared deeply about literacy.

Mr. Amos accepted our offer; he would come to our town to speak. I did not think we would sell a million tickets. His time in Hawaiian shirts and a wide-brimmed straw hat, sauntering through commercials, famously selling us his chocolate chip cookies had passed years before. If we could not raise as much money as hoped, maybe we could raise other things, like hope and awareness.

As we finalized the contractual details, I decided to make the ask.

“Mr. Amos while you are in town would you possibly be open to dropping by our local PBS station and taping a public service announcement around literacy?” (I would worry about selling that to the station if he said yes). “Absolutely!” he said.

Well then.

“Wonderful! Thank you, Mr. Amos.” Emboldened, I surprised myself by making yet another ask. “Mr. Amos, while you are in town would you be willing to drop by one of our local schools and talk to some of the students?”

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The children sat cross legged on the gym floor looking up at this man who had come to their school, a guy named Wally Amos. Rapt, the kids ate up everything he said. You would have thought he was made of cookie dough. And then Famous Amos shared the tiny chocolate chip morsel that I would think about for years.

“Kids,” he said, “You may have heard people talk about whether the glass is half empty or half full. Well, I’m here to tell you the glass is not half full, it is overflowing.”

As a confirmed Full Glasser, I loved the visual. I loved hearing this charismatic man share his perspective on life with these kids.

Is it, though? I asked myself as I stood watching the kids take in his words. Is the glass really overflowing? While I believed he was right, part of me still wondered.

“Is it though?” I would ask myself over the years. “Yes, Orange, it is overflowing!” I heard myself affirm. I believed. Or maybe, I just believed I could believe.

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One day, during the depths of Covid, as I reflected on the good things that Covid had brought my life, what I called my Covid Blessings, I realized I now understood how to operationalize Wally’s tiny morsel of wisdom.

When you think of something you are grateful for, if you will grab that gratitude in your hand, and then go look for something else you are grateful for and also grab that in your fist, then all you need to do to make the glass overflow is to take that fistful of gratitude and shove it in your glass. The dang thing will overflow.

And with that insight, the tiny seed of wisdom Wally Amos planted in me about the glass overflowing began to grow into a gorgeous oak tree with graceful branching limbs.

So now you know:

How a half-empty, fund-losing glass became an overflowing hope-raising wave.

And how, failure can turn into significance.

And how, a thought can grow into a tree of wisdom.

P.S. As I drove Wally Amos back to the airport, I thanked him for how graciously he shared his time with our town. “Orange,” he said. “When you volunteer, you place your hand into the darkness to take hold of another hand and pull it into the light — only to find that the hand you are holding is your own.”