The meaning and purpose of dancing is to dance. Like music, it is fulfilled in the meaning of its course. You do not play a sonata to reach its final chord, and if the meanings of things were simply ends, composers would write nothing but finales.

Reading these seemingly obvious words, written by Alan Watts, I can’t help it but establish a comparison with the cup of coffee standing in front of me. I do not drink it with the purpose of getting an empty cup, nor am I fearing that the cup will become empty. Such an empty state is, at first thought, lacking in substance: as I know it, it is dying.

I still have about half left. The half-full or half-empty question is the is the wrong question to ask: maybe the cup is just a cup, a celebration for and of its own present, living state. Its unforgiving death is by no question in sight! And to think that only a few minutes ago I contemplated it as a newborn cup, reeking of flavourful richness and life.

Yet knowing this, I keep sipping it. Not faster, also not slower. No sense of urgency. I acknowledge its impending finale and I maintain the pace. Just like myself, maybe the cup also foolishly thinks it has a future.