We get so caught up in the most inconsequential matters. We focus on all the wrong things. When you tell someone youve made a new friend, they never ask you the important questions about your new friend. They never ask, what does his voice sound like? What are his hobbies and interests? How does he smile? Does he own a dog? How does he make you feel? Instead, they want to know how old he is, how tall is he, how much he makes, where he lives, what he wears.
Or, if you ask someone about their home, they will tell you about their house. They will tell you how many acres, how much it costs, how many square feet, how many bedrooms, how many bathrooms, the size of their tv. But they wont tell you how their kitchen smells, or how the flowers and garden that they care for look like, or the sounds at night when everything is quiet.
We dont have time to understand things anymore. We buy things already made in stores. But there is no store, no Wal-Mart that sells friendships or happiness, and thats why in our consumer obsessed culture, people dont have friends anymore and find themselves so unhappy. We ride noisy metal snakes that haul us in the dark recesses slithering through the shadows of the underworld from our houses to our prison where we toil all day in mind numbing solitude. We look for all the right important things in a million different wrong places but what we are looking for can be found in a single moment.
The human condition entropies. We werent meant to last forever. Thats why our time is so valuable. We need to spend it with those who matter to us, doing things that are of consequence to us. Do you sense that urgency? Or are you asleep at the wheel? Be careful - when you wake, it may be too late.
Take a minute, catch your breathe and look around. Is this the world you want to live in?
Or, if you ask someone about their home, they will tell you about their house. They will tell you how many acres, how much it costs, how many square feet, how many bedrooms, how many bathrooms, the size of their tv. But they wont tell you how their kitchen smells, or how the flowers and garden that they care for look like, or the sounds at night when everything is quiet.
We dont have time to understand things anymore. We buy things already made in stores. But there is no store, no Wal-Mart that sells friendships or happiness, and thats why in our consumer obsessed culture, people dont have friends anymore and find themselves so unhappy. We ride noisy metal snakes that haul us in the dark recesses slithering through the shadows of the underworld from our houses to our prison where we toil all day in mind numbing solitude. We look for all the right important things in a million different wrong places but what we are looking for can be found in a single moment.
The human condition entropies. We werent meant to last forever. Thats why our time is so valuable. We need to spend it with those who matter to us, doing things that are of consequence to us. Do you sense that urgency? Or are you asleep at the wheel? Be careful - when you wake, it may be too late.
Take a minute, catch your breathe and look around. Is this the world you want to live in?
Nearly every day, the answer is "yes.. it is." Things may not necessarily be the way that I want them to be.. but the world isn't my decision to make. What is just is.. and I'm content to observe it.
If things were perfect, I wonder if I'd still have any reason to think at all. If the world was beautiful, what would I paint a picture of.. or what would I hope for? I don't rightly know.. and it seems so sad to me to think of living without a hope.
So I always decide that things could be worse. I know they're bad for some people.. and I have my share of downers.. but on the whole, I have to be happy.
Fleetwood Mac songs always have good words.. even in simplicity.
Do you think that perhaps the very urgency of which you speak also drives this consummer society? I mean, realising the value of time, and of life, comes at the price of uncertainty... And at the pan of facing ones dissatisfactions. I think that sadly, to many, fear of this unknown creates the comfort in the whole wal-mart thing.