A Bowl of Wisdom

  A few months ago, I happened upon a tiny, hole in the wall, clandestine soup shop in south Philly. It was run by an elderly Italian woman who refused to serve anything but her homemade soups. Nothing else. No pasta, no cutlets, no breads. The woman did not speak English and understood almost nothing that was said to her. She spent the whole day sitting behind a counter, knitting next to an old, clunky, rusted-out radiator that made loud hissing noises at the patrons. Once in a while she would get up and whack the radiator with a cane, scolding it in Italian.

The soup shop itself was a simple affair. Plain, cracked white walls enclosed a small room with a few tables in it. The room was lit by two big, ceiling fans that rotated in synchronized slow motion. The door was nearly invisible from the outside, masked by the darkness of the narrow street. Hand painted on the door’s glass was “Regina’s Soup Shop”.

It was the middle of a freezing winter blizzard; one of the worst Philly had seen in a long time. Mary and I sat at a table under the stark light, sipping hot lentil soup from small red bowls. She was twenty-three and an art major at Temple University. Art for crying out loud. I tried to convince her to pursue higher academic endeavors like myself. She was smart enough; not as smart as me but enough to be something more than a starving artist after she graduates. We’d been friends for a few years now.

I smiled at her.

"Good soup," she said.

I nodded slowly in response. "Mary?" I said after taking a sip of my soup, almost burning my upper lip.

"Yes, Phillip?"

"Do you have any idea of how you’re going to get home?" Mary lived in the far northeast, two miles from the nearest train station.

"Sure…I’ll take the train."

"And then walk two miles through the freezing, blinding storm." I gave her a questioning look.

"No. I’ll take a bus."

"You’d freeze to death waiting. I don’t even think the buses are running in this."

She sat on that for a second, sipped some soup and shrugged. "Well, I guess I’ll have to walk then."

"Mary, stop kidding yourself. Come home with me."

"What? No, my mom would kill me."

  Mary’s mom was the most oppressive, overprotective woman I had ever met. When Mary told her we were having a relationship, she didn’t show up at school for two days, and when she did, it was obvious that they had had a fight. And I mean a real fight. There were scratches on her arms and bruises on her face. It was horrible. She had freaked out and yelled at me. That was the last time I had asked Mary to stay with me. Mary was always the jumpy and paranoid type, but she had calmed down a lot since then.

"Your mom would say it’s the smartest thing you’ve done in weeks."

Mary laughed…a hint of nervousness in her voice. "I doubt that. Besides, that wouldn’t mean much, coming from my mother. I’m going to go home. Hey, I finally started to read that book you gave me last year.”

“The one on Epicurus, the philosopher?”

“Yep, it’s very interesting so far. I know you’re the big-shot philosophy major with a list of honors so, let me see if I am getting this right…Epicurus believed that the greatest good was to seek modest pleasures in order to attain a state of tranquility.”

“You’re correct so far… keep going.”

“…And he also said that one could achieve freedom from fear as well as absence of bodily pain through knowledge of the workings of the world and the limits of one's desires. Am I correct?”

“Yes , you are! Epicurus also said that the combination of these two states is supposed to constitute happiness in its highest form.”

“So, basically…if we follow our simplest pleasures in life, we’ll be at our happiest?”

“Exactly, Mary! You got it!”

I was proud of myself. I would lead another person to achieving a level of wisdom only secondary to that of my own. I was so arrogant I could barely stand myself. I never understood how she could stay with me; how she could tolerate me on a daily basis. She was a saint.

“But that’s absurd, Phil. If we follow our wanton lusts and desires so haphazardly, we’re ignoring the possible and sometimes unavoidable repercussions and ramifications that follow.”

“But if you’re happy, what repercussions can there be?”

“Trust me. My mom would love to sit you down and tell you about the repercussion she suffers daily because of a ‘bad decision’ she made twenty-three years ago with my biological dad in his ’79 Chevy Nova.”

I thought for a moment and decided the comment was too sad to even comment on. I momentarily changed the topic and broke the awkwardness.

"Come on, Mary! Stop being ridiculous! You can’t go out in this weather and walk twenty blocks! That’s suicide!"

"Well, I’m glad to know you care, but I’m going to do what I think is the right thing to do."

"You’re going to do what your mother thinks is the right thing, not what you think."

"That’s not true and you know it. Don’t tell me what I think. That’s the problem with you; you always think you can tell me what to do. Well, I’m sick of it! We’ve been friends for eight years and dating for three months and as sweet and sensitive as you may be, you still can’t figure out that I don’t like that! I have my own convictions, you know. I’m a cognizant being. You’re almost as bad as my mother!"

That was a blow. Being compared to Mary’s mother was like being punched in the stomach by an eight hundred pound gorilla.

"Mary, I’m sorry if you feel that way, but you’re overreacting. You’re right, I probably do that a lot, and I’m sorry, but right now...I’m not trying to control you. I’m just concerned."

"I know you are, Phil, but, well...."

"Mary, listen." I touched her cheek. "I’m not going to make you do anything. All I’m saying is to think about what you really want to do. You, not your mother."

Mary leaned back and sat, thinking. A few seconds later, she said, "Well, I don’t know. I want to go home with you, but...."

"Here…I have an idea. Let’s ask her." I pointed to the old woman behind the counter.

Mary burst out laughing. "OK, sure…go ahead. Let me know how that works out for you.”

I stood up, walked over to the counter and leaned my arms on it. "Hey grandma!" I said, "What do you think?"

The old woman just smiled and shrugged. I could have told her that her grandchildren were being abducted by Martians and she would have just smiled and shrugged. She had no idea what I was saying.

"Well, she wasn’t much help." I said, sitting down and smiling smugly at Mary.

"No, she wasn’t, was she?" she answered, still chuckling. I turned around and saw the old woman leaning on the counter and looking at us, smiling and shaking her head.

"Well," I said, once we had calmed down, "What’ll it be? You coming home with me?"

“Look, Phil…you know I love you but if I go home with you, I know there will be repercussions…and regret. No matter what you say, I know it.”

“No, no regrets, Mary”

“Oh really? You remember that visit to Mexico you had back in our senior year of high school. You remember the little ‘social ailment’ you brought back home with you? You remember the time you threw that huge beer bash in your parent’s house while they were way? You remember how the cops came and your dad almost went to jail because there were minors drunk on his property? You remember how you went to jail and spent all night in a drunk tank because you said you were sober enough to drive?”

“Look, Mary…”

“No you look, Phil. I may not be as smart as you when it comes to academics and I may not have studied all the philosophies and religious wisdom of the world, but I do know one thing…I’m smart enough not to make stupid mistakes just to satisfy some temporal whim. You are always risking repercussions when you make life's decisions based on your wants rather than your needs. Its selfish thinking and sometimes the results affect not just yourself, but others around you as well.”

Mary stood up and grabbed her purse. I felt embarrassed. I looked over at the Italian woman.

  A smile and a shrug.

"All right then,” I said looking down at my half empty bowl.

  Funny, it was half full just moments ago.

  “Let me at least walk you to the train station.”

The elderly Italian woman began making a new batch of soup for the dinner crowd.

As we walked out the door, I turned and waved to the woman behind the counter. Right on cue she smiled and shrugged her shoulders. With that, we walked out the door into the cold wind.