The Difference Between a Water Bottle and a Elephant Problem

A rant on petty perspective

A rant on petty perspective

My wife the other day asked me to get her a glass of water.

We where at her parents house, and her father has these huge, liter sized BYU cougar cups. So I fill it up less than half of it capacity.

When I handed it to her she looked upset and said to me, “Why didn’t you fill it up all the way?” in a annoyed tone. I responded, “well it’s because it is a good amount of water.” This wasn’t a good enough answer to her so I took her cup back and filled it to full capacity, and guess what? she didn’t drink all of it.

The following morning I decided to prove a point, which usually isn’t a good idea to attempt to your spouse. But I thought it made an amusing lesson so I went ahead with it. I filled up a smaller glass which held about 8 ounces and showed it to her. I asked “is this a good amount of water?” She replied, “Yes it is” in a tone that said she didn’t know what I was getting at. I then poured the contents of the smaller cup into the BYU cup. It filled exactly to where it did the day earlier. Same amount of water, different vessels.

This really got me thinking about cups a lot more.

When you see people lugging a gallon of water around you commend them for being so healthy. When someone carries a normal water bottle you didn’t even blink. But if you drink 16 of those water bottles you end up drinking a gallon. And many people without thinking about it constantly drink and refill their bottles 16+ times throughout the day.

So why does this interest me? Because understanding limitations is the easiest way to bypass them. Such is the same with most rules, you cannot break them unless you understand them.

Imagine a world where you where only allowed to have an 8 oz water bottle and no gallon jugs because the “man” wanted to conserve water usage. The simple way to break the rule is to drink the prescribed amount above. The author of the “Kite Runner’ was a practicing doctor who didn’t have time to write a book, so he woke up an hour earlier and spent an hour a day chipping away at the project. One bestseller later, he became a testament to working around limitations.

Going back to my cup story, there is nothing wrong with filling up a liter size cup to the brim. But just because you can doesn’t mean you have to. The opposite side of the spectrum is what happens when you actually have resources, which can make a person wasteful. Just because you can work out every day does’t mean you should, it wastes valuable recovery time to actually grow muscle. Just because you make a yearly salary of more than 30.000 dollars (the typical overhead which pays for all bills in a year) doesn’t mean you should lease a BMW. Buffets often allow people to overeat because of lack of restraint. Real wisdom comes from being able to have a gallon jug and only use 8 ounces, allowing the other 120 ounces to act as a safety net for you to take risks and grow.

I observe that the a key to abundance is living well within you means, allowing anything extra to be a protection for the guaranteed surprise expenses that will pop up in the future.

If you want longevity in your prosperity, then think small with big resources. Paradoxically it leads to bigger accomplishments. Think of the mantra of taking “one day at a time” for example. Or the way to eat an elephant is by eating it “one bite at a time”. Any large amount is manageable if administered in bits, so the 60+ years we have on this earth can be managed by spreading what we have over time.