Last updated on January 3rd, 2026 at 01:05 am
Lessons I Never Learned From My Mother:
This is a journey into spiritual fulfilment, and the search for abiding wisdom.
When we find the courage to seek life’s most complex answers and question the significance of our existence, we realize that life is simply a commitment to live each day to the fullest.
- We awaken daily to default blessings, but the rest of each day is up to us. We are obliged to dedicate every waking moment to filling the glass of life.
Come with me on a journey of positivity as I explore the lessons my mother never taught me, and the silver lining they hold.
My mother was old school. By ‘old school’, I infer that my mother was born during a time when a woman’s place in society was well-defined. It resembled a special form of life system that was reserved only for womenfolk. Perhaps my mother was born into an unspoken rule.
The automatic expectation of the time when my mother made her life debut is that young ladies and women would become submissive housekeepers, persistent gardeners, and sexual and childbearing partners to their husbands. Of course, there were areas and instances where women were independent of their spouses, such as careers, household decisions, and other life choices.
As far as career opportunities went for most women; they took up nursing or sewing while their husbands went to work in business and other financial sectors. Some men earned their keep through using muscular strength in coal mines and at building construction sites. [This article will not delve into what is known as “the world’s oldest profession”.]
In many areas of the world, subsistence farming and other work and pastimes also took place for a large number of men, and even women. They all tried and thrived in their respective homes and places of work. Unfortunately, some men were enlisted into the armed services for the purpose of fighting in the wars.
For women of the day, the glass was always filled to the brim. A sense of nurturing and duty combined with the bindings of society made it so.
Although my mother already was alive during the two wars that ravaged the world, she did not have to wait around anxiously for my father to return from the battle field. At the time, she was a young girl whose glass was filled with many of the things she loved, such as education, learning to be a great cook, attending church regularly and singing in the choir. Fear definitely was a part of the contents of her glass due to a state of war that was imposed upon her life. But I submit that she was a resilient child who strove to fill her life with whatever form of peace and joy that was available to her.
The scenario, however, is not true for all of the women from my mother’s era. There are cultural, geographical and other differences to be acknowledged. It is of no doubt that a sizeable number of women were born into the lap of luxury, and they later married men who were even wealthier than their own fathers.
But, there were women who did not have the good fortune of a wealthy husband and all the trappings of high society. Other women found marital bliss in the most unexpected places. This makes for an engaging topic to which I ought to dedicate a future article.
For a select variety of women from my mother’s era, the glass was always full, but not in the best and most enjoyable way. A sense of duty and the bindings of society filled their glass of life to the brim.
During my childhood, my assumption was that my mother’s life was uncomplicated. To me it was ‘just so’. If she felt duty-bound by the contents of her ‘glass’ (her life), none of it was obvious to me.
What I did not see is that my mother had dreams for herself, but the unspoken rules of life obliged her to become the obedient wife of someone. No matter her education, depth of knowledge, career aspirations, and untapped talents; all she had to do was be a good wife (in her case, a good common law wife for many years), who oversaw all of the running of the home where she lived.
This is not an inference that my mother’s life was all misery and absolutely no bliss. And not by any means was she entrapped. There were many happy days when she sang along and danced to the music from a gramophone. She happily roasted chicken, baked Victoria sponge cakes and scones, and started a private cook book. She also had a great passion for gardening (voluntarily), and she was able to turn all of her favorite past times into reality.
And yet I maintain that the marital side of my mother’s life was overwhelmingly filled with responsibility, servitude, and emotional misunderstandings. I am certain that all of these bindings often saw intermittent scatterings of relationship bliss and freedom. And I dare say that for my mother, and probably a number of other women who found themselves in a similar situation, their relationship life might have been confusing and filled with bewilderment; but it was also interrupted by periods of undiluted happiness.
Since this article is about my personal journey into filling my own ‘glass’ (i.e. living my life to the fullest); I take my mother’s experiences as a guide and portal to my material and spiritual growth, combined with all of the lessons that I must learn. The lessons will help me make sense of what it is that I really want and need from my own life.
To put all of the above thoughts into context and properly set the stage, I commence the remainder of this article by saying that I feel that I was born with a glass half filled. In no way could my glass have been full to capacity. Not with the fact that I have to sometimes navigate my way through various passages of life, like a sea captain whose ship must be steered through sometimes difficult and challenging waters.
If the day of my birth presented me by default a full glass of all life’s wonderful blessings, life would be sweet one hundred percent of the time. But this is not the case, which brings me back to sea captains and ships.
Ships are not always strong enough to endure, and ultimately survive, every violent storm they encounter. Some ships run aground and sink into the abyss of deep blue waters. They become a part of the ocean they once sailed; and probably forgotten, they rust away until they turn into a pile of corroded dust on the ocean floor. This is sad, but also true of life. Sometimes things go wrong, and the glass becomes too difficult to fill up as intended; and we forget to save ourselves, or salvage what remaining strength we have deep inside.
The wonderful news is that we do not have to sink into permanent misery. The glass of life will be delivered again the next day, and we can start again with renewed opportunity to sail bravely and safely through the day.
If you think about it, life is also a lot like water. And just like a glass of water, life can be affected by the smallest things. The glass can fall, shatter into pieces and lose all of its contents to the floor that broke it. A glass is unable to bounce up and be easily saved and salvaged. It is forever changed by its fall – just one event that changes everything. Similarly, a single event can change the course of a person’s life. But, just as a ship needs to be strong enough to weather the ocean’s storms, so too do we need to be strong enough to endure the ups and downs of life. The glass falls and breaks, and we must obtain another one to fill the next day.
The important thing is that we do not give up on the opportunities and good blessings that are gifted us every single day.
Let us for a moment imagine that your glass of life was full on the day of your birth. The wonders of a permanently happy, successful and fulfilled and exhilarating life would have been forcefully and instantaneously thrust upon you. You would have entered the earth as a force to be reckoned with, and all of your life’s choices and experiences would have been scripted into your life. Your life’s journey would have been cast in stone and unchangeable. But it would have been paved with a great amount of concession.
Would it have made life easy for you? Absolutely. A life filled with all things good, happy and successful with exhilaration raining down in spades every day, is probably the desire of many people.
Under these silver spoon circumstances, might you have felt like king or queen of the world? I guess so. We were never engineered to be less than perfect. And having a glass that is permanently full would guarantee all of life’s perfection in every wonderful way. But in reality, none of this would be ideal for your survival.
So, I ask myself, what could be wrong with this scenario? Why would you not want to have a nice full glass of life with all its breathtaking trimmings thrust upon you?
The first reason is that I would not get to know me, because I would be either a replica of someone or a carbon copy of some other force.
Secondly, life would be devoid of the choices that I could make in order to experience my own life as a uniquely-minded individual.
A third reason would be that I would have no control of any of the events which take place in my life. Granted, I cannot control everything that happens around me, but I sure as hell can control what happens inside of me. Born with all of these decisions completely out of my control would render me a lowly passenger in my own life. I would miss out on the challenges presented by my half of the glass sometimes standing empty while I drown in misery, sadness or confusion. And missing from my life would be the feelings of fulfilment when my glass fills up with new experiences that bring joy, laughter and fortitude.
It is also lack of the ‘ups and downs’ of life that would cause me to yearn for the briefest view of a life of exciting changes, challenges, and even a little organized chaos.
Life thus far has taught me to enjoy the glass of life being half empty
Just think of all the goodness that one can add to the already filled essential half of the glass. One can be as creative as one wishes to be, because life presents many wonderful modes to topping up the glass.
Each morning we are given a new glass of life. It is up to us to fill it up as we see best. We can fill it with the negativity of the day, or we can fill it with happiness and love. If we make the decision to fill it with happiness, then we will be one step closer to making our dreams of a fulfilled life a reality. We all want to be happy and have a successful life, but in order to do that, we need to put in the work of filling our glass with the kind of ingredients that will ensure the life that we want for ourselves.
Each day we are given the opportunity to better ourselves and our situation.
We need to take advantage of that opportunity and not let it go to waste. If we make the decision each day to fill our glass of life with positivity, then eventually it will become habit, and ultimately, it will be second nature.
The difficult paths of life cause us to navigate our way into even more difficult challenges, which can only be overcome by filling our life with goodness of spirit. This is the buoyant air needed to keep the ship of life sailing smoothly on every stormy sea.
There was a time in my young adult life when I assumed that the challenges I sometimes faced were a lot tougher than what they truly were.
My thinking was that other people were partly responsible for certain aspects of my life. What I did not realize is that those people were responding to what was in my glass. I had shared with them the contents of a glass that was not very strong, and I wanted desperately their help and fortification.
However, my idea that other people could adequately or honorably fill my glass was wrong. Imagine the feelings of emptiness and dejection that such a belief can bring… All along, it was only I who could do what was good for me. It was only I who knew precisely what my glass required in order for me to thrive as a human being.
Nowadays, I do my best to be thoughtful about the contents of the part of my glass that requires me to fill it.
Truly I am grateful for the essential half I wake up to every morning, as it contains the essence of life. It holds the breaths I take, my eyesight, hearing and ability to move. These are blessings by default – the standard blessings. The words I am able to speak, and the beating of my heart are also blessings from the half of the glass I awaken to every morning.
My thoughts are of my own making, and so are my actions and the words I utter unto others. As much as the ability to speak arrives in the essential half of my life glass, it does not dictate what words I get to choose, and use. Those words are part of what fills the half of the glass for which I am responsible.
What else goes into filling my half of the glass every day?
Gratitude is at the forefront of all the ingredients that go into my glass of life, because opportunities abound to help fill our glass when we view life through the thankful heart. My thankfulness is followed by love for life, myself, my surroundings, and members of my family, friends, and other people who add good value in my life.
Silence is another one of my favorite glass filling ingredients. Every day, I give myself the gift of silence and extensive yet gentle thought. This helps me to reconnect with my soul.
As a writer who has many words to share, I add writing to my glass in order to elevate my spirit and hopefully do something similar for even one other person. Writing helps me to emancipate the thoughts and ideas that are trapped inside my mind. It is almost as if they are begging to be set free – to be released in order for them to be a part of the greater world.
When all of these amazing ingredients are combined, they create a recipe for profound happiness and wisdom. Hopefully, this wisdom will lead me down a path of self-discovery and kindness towards others. Life is beautiful and meant to be lived with an open heart. This is what I strive for each and every day.
Filling the Glass with Empathy and Kindness
Empathy and kindness are also constant glass-fillers, for without them all else that I do in my quest to be a good human would fail. There is the empathy and kindness I reserve for myself, and then there is the one that I give willingly unto others. It is hard to imagine a glass without two of the most important ingredients for a fulfilled life.
We know what a world without empathy and kindness can feel like. Some people are forced to witness and live it every day. They are trapped in situations where their life glass is filled on their behalf with pain and suffering. None of it is of their choosing, as nobody ever chooses pain to fill their life glass. Such is the lack of empathy and kindness.
It is ultimately my belief that the spirit is what we are entitled with – it is what we were born into and what we were born of. Our innate entitlement is an authentic spiritual journey through life. And at some point, the glass will begin to empty itself of all its contents. It will not hold onto anything, not even the breaths we take.
At the time of dying, when the body and soul part ways, this is the only time when most people say ‘boy I did it all’, or they experience regrets about what they could have done or should have done during their bodily life. The end is always about how the glass of life was filled, or how it was not filled, or how it was neglected until the day when all hope is lost.
So now, I digress and return to pondering about my mother.
I am certain that throughout her lifetime, my mother was unable to fill her glass of life in the manner with which I am blessed to do every morning, and throughout every day. She no doubt sought through her own blessings and wished that she could place every one of them into her glass. I imagine that she might have yearned for a more satisfying life away from all the emotional stress that she endured.
My mother never talked about living a life that was half empty without the possibility of filling it according to her own aspirations. Yet, as I journey through my own life and often reflect upon, and even compare her life with mine; it is clear that my mother’s life was not as fulfilled as she would have liked it to be.
The lessons I did not learn from my mother were meant only for myself, and could only have emanated from my own life experiences, ideas and decisions. No one could have taught them to me. Their only source is me and how I choose to live my life.
My lessons exist through opportunities presented by each new day, and the daily filling of each half-full glass. This is a personal choice for every human being.
During the journey through life, absorbing new experiences is one of the goals that we set in our sub-conscience.
For example, when we decide to walk in nature, we do not go out with the attitude that we have seen it all (such as we know how the wind blows, birds fly, trees grow, etc.) Instead, we use the feeling that we want to experience the beauty of nature for the first time; and thus we allow nature to fill us up, and make us feel relaxed and recuperated. We want to be able to gain new memories, even from the places and events we have experienced before. Whatever brings joy and peace, the feeling of exuberance can be experienced over and over again, and always as if for the first time.
Going out in nature with a glass brim full would prevent us from absorbing nature’s powerful offerings. However; a glass that is half full will allow us to fill up on the beauty and splendor that we are privileged to experience.
And so it is with every single aspect of life. Whatever you do or experience is your way of filling up your glass.
Arising in the morning, taking a deep breath and putting a smile on your face adds good value to your glass. Your early morning exercise, meditation, listening to your favorite song, and taking a peaceful walk in your garden fill your glass with the goodness of life. Going to work, doing a favor for a friend or even a complete stranger, and generally being kind to yourself and others fills your glass with abundant blessings.
The privilege of filling your glass ought to be a constant and beautiful work in progress that ultimately brings about favorable changes in your life.
My concept of a glass half full is that I am bound by the responsibility of finding new spiritual paths for my life. There is also constant growth and profound beauty for my soul waiting to be discovered. From these virtues, I can fill my glass over and over again every hour, minute, second, and every single day of my bodily existence.
Unlike my mother’s life responsibilities, my bindings are divine favors that are nothing short of a beautiful pleasure to own.
Every morning, when I awaken to my default blessings, I feel thankful that my glass is half full, and that it is no difficult challenge. It is a blessing because I am granted opportunity to add the contents of the second half of my glass. The half that is thrust upon me is life – the breath I take. And then there is the ability to use the senses of sight, sound, smell, speech, and thought.
What fills your glass?
Whether your glass is a champagne flute or highball tumbler because you live large; fill it with nothing but goodness. Humility can abound in us all, and so can virtues such as empathy, love and kindness.
The glass will be delivered again tomorrow, and every day after that, and you will have another chance to make it full. So make the most of every day and fill your glass as much as you can with all of the ingredients that guarantee a life of love, happiness, and hope.
Every day, I hope your glass of life is filled with gratitude, gentle care, true excitement and determination, love that is unabated, humility, kindness, and beautiful triumph that is rightfully yours. All of these things will lead to a fuller, more profound love for life, happiness in every day, and optimism that can only come from within. Thank you for reading and enjoying this article. TMLM
© Triumphant Mind Lifestyle Magazine – triumphantmind.com – All rights reserved.
Share This Article:
Get Coffee for Diane
Show Diane a little love by treating her to a cup of coffee, or sparkling water! Thank You!
$5.00
Leave a Reply