Petit à petit, Yuan fait son nid.

 Lesson 9 Fulfillment

    I was very tired, or totally fatigued days before, physically and intellectually.

     A poet once said, “After three days without reading one book, when I look at myself in the mirror, I find an ugly soul.” Exactly the same thing is happening to me now. How many days didn’t I touch a book? I have some books which were supposed to be finished at least two months ago, now they are still lying by my side.

    I was hungry for them, but I didn’t find time. I felt I was more and more impatient, more and more unhappy.

    When you look back, all the books you read, all the persons you met, all the hardness you went through, they all look like a shadow upon water, the shadow of your life, dreamlike and intangible. But you can feel them, feel them all, in your blood, in your character, in your personality. There they exist.

    Difficult to say, whether the books make you become a happiner person or a sad one. Because the more you read, the more sensitive you become, the more you could feel something the others can not feel. Before, I would like to tell the young children to read this book or that one. More and more I was hesitating. Reading makes you think more, and thinking might be the source of annoyance. At least, that’s what I began to think.

    But Jose disagreed.

    He said, “Yuan, consider a simple analogy.” He began to speak, slowly. “When you were born, you came to this world with a little glass cup in your hand. We can call this cup——your personal fulfillment potential and every human being, wherever they are and whatever culture they are born in gets the exact same one when they begin their journey into this world.”

    “As time begins to flow, you start to grow up. First, your little glass cup is being effortlessly filled by the love from your parents and your family members. And thus, the size of your cup is also growing because it needs to learn to contain more love and hence more fulfillment. “

    “But slowly and surely, the love within your family can not satisfy you totally, you need something else to meet the ever demanding needs of your now so little glass cup who keeps growing … as long as you keep feeding it.”

      “In fact, to a significant extent, the fellowship from the outside can not meet your needs. Or it can not the match the growing speed of your own fulfillment glass cup. So what will you do about it?”

     I was silent, and listend to him quietly.

    Jose kept talking, “Unfortunately, some people stop making efforts because they feel it is much too demanding for them. So, their glass cup doesn’t grow any more, it remains the same size and without being aware of it they are, in fact, limiting their fulfillment potential.”

    “But others keep feeding their minds in many other different ways, like reading, listening to classical music, travelling, studying, making love, whatever. In fact, there are many many ways you can use to keep your glass cup growing. “

    “With your small glass cup becoming bigger and bigger, your ability to feel fulfillment gets stronger. And once you are fulfilled, the objective level of your happiness gets to be much higher than the one of the others. Why? Simple, because your glass cup is bigger then other’s, hence the quantity of fulfillment is following and gets bigger also.” 

    Jose said, “Yes, the more you read, the more sensitive you will be, thus the more sorrowful you could feel also. But Yuan, you should know that the ability to feel is always coming in two ways. That means that the more sorrowful you could be, the happiner you can get. Because the bigger size of your glass cup is there, the better ability to feel fulfillment is there. Or we can say, it is just like a spring, the stronger it can be compressed, the more powerful it can be. Right? That is your emotional capacity.  That is your fulfillment potential. That is your glass cup.”

    “This is difficult to be grasped by the others, because of how could they know about your glass cup when most of them are not even aware of their own?  Only you, only you can know it, only you can feel it, only you can touch it, with your heart, with your soul, with your everything.”

     “So, Yuan, what is the size of your glass cup?” Jose smiled.

     Well, I don’t know what the size of my glass cup is, but I know that I do everything I can to keep it growing, day after day.

    And you, what is the size of your glass cup?