The Teapot & the Colander


We are like pieces of a tea set. Sometimes we’re the teacup, and sometimes we’re the pot. But there are imposters among us: colanders posing as teacups. 

When we fill the cups with our goodwill, they are warm and grateful. The colander, by contrast, is insatiable. It takes a teapot time to figure out what’s going on. Soon, there’s an army of teapots pouring all they have into the colander, to no avail. Filling it becomes an all-consuming obsession, and the teapots feel a sense of pride and camaraderie in their team effort. 

Once a teapot runs dry, it’s a threat to the colander because it signals to the full pots that their efforts may be futile. At minimum the imposter wails about being betrayed and abandoned by the teapot, but oftentimes it seeks to destroy the empty pots, sweeping their shattered pieces out of sight.

The moral of the story is to look for the holes. 

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