Week 6 Thoughts in lockdown

Am I faulted? Oh, yes. Am I drinking too much wine these days? Yes, I am. Am I also feeling like a cad, doing so? Yeah, kind of. Am I wasting where I should be saving? Yes. Am I in full awareness of this. Hell yes. I choose to have more wine than I should, because that is the way my life is, and hey, if I don’t support the local wineries, they will be bought up by global investors and that might be the end of it. So, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, buy local wine and drink it. That is the huge and immediately feel good incentive to publicly support an industry in this area that has survived since the Romans. It would be pity, no, down-right disgrace to let a virus wipe out a way of living.

I recently found some nice shoes at a store, not too expensive, made by women in Spain. I asked a friend if she wants a pair. She was consciously not hoarding because this time taught her to not buy objects she did not need. That made me look around my house. What did I possess I needed? Very little, in fact nothing at all. Now I imagined everyone, well maybe not everyone, but a huge chunk of us, would not buy things because we did not exactly need it. I can’t even begin to imagine what would happen in millions of households all across the world. Today, the pandemic has actually taught us not how much we need things but how much our lives, and here I really mean lives in the global sense, depend on us buying things. It is a give and take situation, the balance has to be kept. So, in spite of all the morality and the actual necessity of things and objects, I choose to buy. Somewhere, some women will be making a living out of it. There are objects in my house, absolutely useless to the normal person, figurines made of straw and cloth from Peru, wooden statues from Africa, figures of Gods from India. I really don’t need them, but when I bought or was presented, I valued their worth, not in terms of money but because they provided me with joy and someone else with a livelihood.  Sure we don’t need much, in fact to take it even further, other than fresh air to breathe and food and water, we actually don’t need anything. But maybe if we extend our horizons a bit, then other people need the same. By supporting local industry and community I just make sure that I am honouring and respecting someone else’s need, also of fresh air and food. Giving what I can whilst I can. And when I can’t, I won’t. Simplicity can be so deceptively complex at times.

The ascetics who live in wilderness and strangely sometimes unawares even amongst us, do not need things, they seem to manage in our world with nothing or next to nothing. I suppose, very few of us have the urge to do that for it is a difficult path to be on. Their contribution to us, however, is subtle and at the same time, magnificent. They provide us spiritual guidance, they create energetic spaces for us to bathe in radiance. What are we providing? My motto has been and will always be, leave the world a bit better than what you found it in. So how am I making our world better? Today, more than ever, I am buying the shoe that will provide food for someone, I am drinking wine to keep a tradition from dying and the winemakers and harvesters from a harsh future, I am ordering food to keep the local restaurants alive. But all, with a consciousness that is alive with my breathe. Whatever road you choose to take, make it count. It matters and it will have an effect. 

Stillness.
In stillness, I listen
to the voices.
In stillness, I embrace
your story and mine.
Diverse and beautiful.
Like flowers that bloom
without you and me,
without a care in this world.
There is such freedom 
in acknowledging -  
How tiny we are;
How fragile we are;
How like a drop of water
In the ocean we are.
Life may mean something to you.
It may mean nothing.
It does not matter.
What matters is how
we hold up,
how our lives are entwined
in the heartbreaking
vulnerability,
that is truly ours.
In stillness, I accept
all of me and all of you.
 

2 thoughts on “Week 6 Thoughts in lockdown”

Leave a Comment