favorite things 08

last year around Christmas time i was thrift shopping with my son and i spotted this little beauty for 79 cents on a bric-a-brac shelf. score. i brought it home and it quickly became my new favorite drinking glass. captain america. and then as fate would have it one day as it was soaking in a pan of water, i inadvertently put a pile of plates on top of it. when i lifted the plates later, captain america had been crushed. sadness. but as i lifted the broken pieces out of the pan of water a little zen story came back into my mind that goes a little something like this...
“you see this goblet?” asks achaan chaa, the thai buddhist master. “for me this glass is already broken. i enjoy it; i drink out of it. it holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. if i should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. but when I put this glass on the shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, i say, ‘of course.’ when I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.”
and so i, the grasshopper realized in that moment that sometimes our favorite things are already gone...