Coldplay: Glass of Water Meaning

Song Released: 2008

Glass of Water Lyrics

Scared of losing all the time
He wrote it in a letter
He was a friend of mine
He heard you could see your future
Inside a glass of water
The ripples and the lines
And he asked
"Will I see heaven in mine?"

That is just the way it...

1. anonymous

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   Jan 9th 2014 !⃝

   When they say he wrote it in a letter he might mean a suicide letter and when they are talking about seeing heaven maybe it means hes trying to decide? Going nowhere fast means that he doesnt see his life going anywhere
2. Nicholas Chaplin Caplin

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   Sep 15th 2011 !⃝

   There it is. Right in front of me. The glass of water is right there. One sip and my thirst will forever be put to sleep. Or will it?
   That is the question I always ask myself. Will the glass of water put out my thirst of knowing?
   I’ve asked that question before, but not to me.
   
   I used to live life without asking. Without any question of the future, the present and past.
   I used to live as a regular man. A man without too many worries and a job at the wind mill. Now you may ask how does anyone work at a windmill now a days? Simple! Get drunk, trash a 138 years old windmill and wake up by the sound of the police knocking on your door, telling you to rebuild the entire windmills just as it was or go to jail. I obviously chose the first option.
   So that’s the answer to that question.
   So here I am, rebuilding a 138 year old windmill. It’s a good thing I took Carpenter classes in high school.
   
   After 15 days, I have managed to complete the frame of the entire building. Tomorrow will be my birthday. I never imagined I would spend my 23rd birthday on the 16th day of rebuilding an old mill. But that’s what happens when you don’t know what the future will bring. At least that is what Millie always said.
   Millie, the girl who walks past the windmill every day. Millie, the only living soul that walks anywhere near the windmill. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen anyone other than Millie, considering I live in a small house not too far from the mill on the far side of town.
   I don’t know exactly where she lives but I plan on finding out. Tomorrow when she walks past I will build up enough courage to say hi and ask her where she lives. It can’t be too far from where I work considering she walks past it every day.
   
   Today is my 16th day of working on the mill, my 16th day of seeing Millie and it should have been my 16th day of waking up in a bad mood, but today was different. It was my birthday, but that wasn’t why it was different.
   I got to the previously old but now newer windmill and started working. I started working as I had never done before. My hand was swift with the hammer and I could lift twice as many planks. Everything was going better than ever before, and I felt excited! I actually enjoyed working on this impressive building.
   Then came Millie. I saw her walking towards the mill and my suddenly fell to the ground. All that happiness suddenly mixed with anxiety and created a feeling that made me just want to dig a hole in the ground and stay hidden so Millie wouldn’t see me. I realised all the courage I had built up was now long gone and I was left with my mind. It told me all kinds of things and reminded me of everything that could go wrong. But all of a sudden I got a feeling that silenced my mind and gave me only one thought. “You shouldn’t predict the future, but face it as it comes”.
   With that being the last though I ever thought without having Millie by my side, I hurried towards her just as she made it up the hill and the next thing I remember was waking up in my bed hearing birds I had never even heard before and seeing colours I only thought existed in stories and tales. And I knew that Millie and I was destined to be together. And so we were. Until she discovered the glass of water.
   
   Life was good, in fact it was better than ever before! I never imagined that I would ever look forward to the next day as it was my first. But now I did. Me and Millie lived life as it was suppose to be lived. But there was one thing I didn’t know about Millie. She had ideas and thoughts unlike those you normally think of.
   Millie loved water. She loved it so much that she never drank anything other than water.
   She would start everyday sitting at her table with a glass of water. And she always drank it as soon as she had sat down. But one day, she just sat down at her table with her glass of water and started staring at the glass. She just looked at it as it was some kind of liquid from outer space. And then she asked me;
   “If you don’t know what the future will bring, how can you ever know what your future will hold?”
   
   I looked at her and at her glass at least twice before I asked her what she was talking about.
   She told me to look at the ripples and the lines, before asking her what she was talking about. She then got up from her chair and walked out the front door without saying goodbye.
   Befuddled as I was, I sat down to look at the glass of water. What she said about ripples and lines had somehow gotten stuck in my mind and I couldn’t think about anything other than those two words. I started looking more and more intensely at the glass, trying to see the ripples and lines. It was still. As still as a gray sky over the quiet ocean. Suddenly I saw in the reflection of the still water surface, a wall. I turned around and there it was. It was the wall I see everyday. But there was something special about it. It had writings on it. Writing written with Millie’s handwriting. It said “the hollowest of halos is no halo at all”.
   I wondered why she would write such a thing on the wall in our kitchen. I decided to wait for her to come back home before asking her.
   The next day I woke up on the sofa. I had fallen asleep waiting for her to come home. I walked into the kitchen and there she sat. On her chair as she had done everyday for the last 41 days. For some reason I couldn’t stop thinking about 42. 42 days since we first met. 42 days of me seeing happiness in my life. It was on this 42nd day, it would all change.
   I asked Millie when she came home last night. She just kept staring at the glass of water in front of her. I realised it was the same glass of water as yesterday. I sat down at the table right in front of her. She then said;
   “I’m scared of loosing all the time. This is what happens when when you don’t know what the future will bring. This is why ripples and lines bring riddles and rhymes while the stars in heaven align. If I can’t see the future, how will I know heaving is in mine?”
   
   Tears started to fill up her eyes and her voice started shaking. I held her hands, they were cold. My mind started tell me all kinds of things and I didn’t know what to say. After not being able to utter a single word, a feeling struck me and all my thoughts disappeared. I didn’t have a single thought in my head, yet my mouth started talking.
   “Don’t ask. Neither how full nor empty. You’ll spend your whole life living in the past.”
   
   She gave me a look I had never seen before in my life. A look of understanding. She understood what I had said. She understood.
   She never looked at her glass of water again without looking at me first. She has never been happier.
   
   
   Now here I sit. With a glass of water right in front of me. 42 years later. It’s been exactly 23 months, 16 weeks, 15 days, 8 hours and 4 minutes since Millie moved on. Since Millie moved to the stars.
   She always knew how to put her thirst to sleep. She always knew how to put my thirst to sleep. “What are we drinking when we’re done? Glasses of water.” was the last thing she told me.
   Maybe I’m done?

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