They say: the drop that made the glass overflow. But a glass doesn't always overflow and stay intact. Sometimes it cracks and sometimes it is shattered.
Tears are drops. They fall silently, one by one, for years. If we collected them, we would notice when the glass fills up. Each drop on its own is small. One sentence left unsaid, one swallowed "this isn't right", one injustice you agree to carry because it's easier than fighting. The glass stands on its base and holds all of it, the way a face holds a smile. Until the last drop falls.
The last drop is never the heaviest. It's just the last.
And then that glass, that accumulated injustice kept for years, is hurled against the wall. Anger isn't pretty, but it's honest and often unavoidable. It's the first to say: "Enough!" The glass is gone. What remains is what always remains after a break. A floor full of shards.
Exactly two years ago a country learned what it means when the glass breaks. A canopy collapsed and with it fell the illusion that everything can be endured in silence. Silence was no longer golden, nor an option. What followed was not a quiet overflow of pain but the loud breaking of injustice. The country had to change, not because someone decided so, but because there was no glass left to pour discontent and corrupted despair into.
The lives that were lost, sadly neither the first nor the last at the time, were the sacrifice that led us into a dark tunnel, at the mouth of which stood a signpost pointing to freedom. Many brave and dignified people walked that road and they finally found the light. Good always defeats evil.
That outer, social collapse spilled over into the inner one. Which glass do I look at every day while the water has long been running down its sides?
The train I boarded ran on tracks built solely of good intentions. The longer I sat watching the wrong stations pass by, the harder the way back home (to myself) became. The accumulated injustice and the transparent immorality finally cracked in the face of a distorted reality. A moment later, I found myself with shards of glass all around me. I broke the glass in silence.
"The last drop is never the heaviest. It's just the last."
That is where the real work begins. Not in the breaking, the breaking happens on its own. The real work is walking across a floor full of glass without cutting yourself. Not turning anger into a new injustice, toward yourself or toward others. Not picking up the pieces and gluing them back into the same glass, only with cracks. It's pointless.
So stop for a moment and let me ask you what I ask myself:
How many drops are in your glass right now?
Do you keep it because it's valuable or because it has become a habit?
When it breaks, and it will break, who will pick up the pieces, you or the ones you love?
And what will you then refuse to pour into the new glass?
Cheers.