Brother Edwin told us that the glasses
represented our capacity for happiness and that two very happy people could
have different capacities for it but once full, neither would be happier than
the other.
Since that time I have come to somewhat
modify Brother Edwin’s lesson by thinking that if two people of equal capacity
have different approaches to happiness there can be a crucial difference.
It was about a year when I invited my
wayward granddaughter, Rebecca, then 15, to a chat at Starbucks. I told her
that two people could have two different approaches to life. One could seek
happiness while the other contentment. I further told her that those who seek
contentment can be satisfied with less and suffer less stress. And because
their goals are smaller they may achieve contentment. Those of us (I include myself
in this category) who seek happiness must compete, fight, study, perfect to
excel. We suffer stress and disappointment. Our goal is almost always not
reached. I asked Rebecca if she wanted to be happy or content. She answered
that she wanted to be happy. I told her that I was not sure which of the two the
“better” goal was.
Of late Brother Edwin’s glass has suffered
a further modification. I see the glass as the glass of memory and experience. We
are born as an empty slate or, why not, an empty glass. We fill it with
experience, skills, memory, failures, remembrances, passions, love and, yes
moments of contentment and despair.
Then when we die, when the glass cannot be
filled any more, death picks up the glass and shatters it against the wall. Christmas can be happy. And
it is. But it is also a time to reflect and in particular to think of
friends gone and of moments that can only be shared with one's memory.
Those who are left remember the moments
had, figuratively, picking up the shards from the floor. But the glass cannot
ever be put together again nor filled with its original contents. Finally all memory is no more.
Of late I have posited to myself the
justification, as an example, to spend $50 to go to a wonderful concert of
festive Bach cantatas when one is so close to filling the glass. Would it be
better to stay at home? Why am I reading
books every night, watching films, and wondering how my roses will survive more
years of shade?
Perhaps the answer is a question that the
newborn babe (the empty glass) cannot ask, "Should I live and learn or speed, as
of now, to that inevitable end and make it all that much easier?"
Unfortunately Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S.C.
is dead and I cannot consult him to weigh in. But I think he would say, “Alex,
read that book.”