Size Might Not Matter, but Quantity Sure Does

The importance of an item is relative to the quantity of that item available. The truth of this statement became clear as I contemplated the last fine glass of a 12-glass set we received some 10 years ago. Soon after receiving the set, they became our favorite orange juice glasses. I remember when we broke the first one. We had company over, our house being small, it was a little crowded. Some people were sitting on the carpet others on the couch and chairs, and everyone had to navigate around people’s barley and orange juice glasses. The inevitable happened; one of the glasses got kicked and broke spilling its juice onto the rug. Our main concern was for people not cutting themselves and our rug! The glass was an expendable, if regrettable victim. After all there were 11 more. What is one out of twelve? A mere 8.3%, we still had over 90% of the set. The years went one, and with them a few more glasses here and there. Some died in the washing due to slippery soapy hands, others perished under the movers gentle care, and quite frankly I don’t even remember the fortune (misfortune) that befell a few of them.

Now that there is but the one fine glass left of what was once a 12 piece set, it sits reverently in the cabinet collecting dust for months at a time. Its value now too great to risk breaking it by use or wash, the glass has become a sort of relic. The value of a glass when the set was complete was derived from the quantity it represented in relationship to the whole, each glass being only 1/12 or roughly 8.3% of the whole. Now the same glass is a 1/1 or a 100% of the existing glasses, breaking it would be comparable to breaking the whole of the set 10 years ago.