For today’s philosophy lesson, the lecturer stood on the stage but said nothing. The only thing he did was retrieving an empty Mayonnaise bottle from the drawer. Next, he took out some golf balls. He then pushed the balls into the bottle and asked if everyone agree that the bottle is full. All the students agreed to that.

Then, the lecturer took a cup of tiny cobblestone. He slowly put them into the bottle, shook it, and soon the spaces between all the golf balls were filled. This time, the lecturer asked again if they think the bottle’s full, and the students gave the same answer.

Just when the students are done answering, the lecturer took out a cup of sand again from the drawer. With the same method, he filled the bottle up with that cup of sand. When he asked the same question, the students gave him the same answer again. Some of the students even commented that “There couldn’t be any space left.”

And again, the lecturer took out two cups of coffee this time. He poured the coffee into the bottle, leaving nothing behind. But this time, before the lecturer could ask the same question, the students laughed and said “This time it must be full!”

In the classroom full of laughter, the lecturer said “Do you know why I did that? Do you know what I’m trying to say from this? I wanted to demonstrate a philosophy out of this mayonnaise bottle, a philosophy about our lives.

This mayonnaise bottle is just like our lives, golf balls represent major parts in our lives such as belief, kosen-rufu, family, children, friends, health, and your loved ones. A life without those cobblestones and sand is alright, but if we lose the major parts of our lives, it’ll be meaningless.

The cobblestones are things that filled up our lives like occupation, house, car, education, the organization’s activities, and so on. The tiny sand on the other hand, represents tiny little things that we couldn’t even remember. If I start my demonstration today with the cup of sand instead of golf balls, we would have any spare space for the golf balls or cobblestones. Meanwhile, if I chose to put the cobblestones at first, we wouldn’t have space for the golf balls either. This is how our lives work.

If you spend your valuable time on those tiny little things, we wouldn’t have time to solve other major events of our lives then. Hence, we must spend more time to care about the things that bring us happiness and joy. Spend more time with our children, our parents, our grand-parents, pay more attention to our family, and our health. Don’t worry too much about our unfinished housework, the untidy house. We’ll have time for these things after we’ve arranged our time for greater things! We only live once, let’s arranged things in our lives according to their priority. Only till then our lives would be meaningful.”

When the lecturer was done explaining, one of the students raised her hand and asked “But sir, what does the coffee represents then?” The lecturer replied “I’m glad that you asked. The coffee’s trying to tell us that no matter how full the bottle could be, we’d still have space and time for a coffee with our friends!” Our lives may be packed, making us busy all the while, so many things, so many tasks to be done in just 24 hours. Are we living in our own little box?



Postscript:

 “Gosh, there’s test everyday!” “I don’t want to study anymore! What can I do?” “The pocket money mom gave me is just too little!” “That classmate’s ignoring me…” “I’m not even done with my work, how do I continue fighting on my kosen-rufu?” “Are we filling up the time of our lives with education, family, and relationship?”

If I must say, I’d think that time is fair to everyone. Everyone’s got 24 hours a day, it depends on how you use it. Just as our Sensei said “If we wish to have free time, we must have some time for ourselves to think no matter how busy we are. We must be in touch with the time of other things, to listen to them, to look over everything.”

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