Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Life moves on with the seasons...
So, it goes, day by day. You find out someone has cancer and won't live to see the flowers bloom and so as you ride your horse through the woods, it is especially sweet and treasured, heightened. You live day by day...carpets get cleaned, dog walked, gardens tended, brush cleared, food cooked, elders looked after, sleep blessed when it comes uninterupted by worries. You wake to a cacophony of spring birdsong and are grateful for your dog's nuzzling, your horses' ways of knowing and teaching and lifelong friends and students whoare alive and come to stay with you now and again. And that's enough.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
My fellow Americans: More than a FB soundbyte post
Ok, preface. I too have been sucked into the vortex and pass no judgment on anyone.
Americans have been conditioned to spend more than they have and to believe in consumerism and that money equals happiness. We are spoiled, arrogant, empirialist and feel we are entitled and have bought into some obscene idea of democracy that doesn't and hasn't existed for ages.
I watch as people spend waaay too much for Christmas, a holiday I used to love and not just cause of presents, but family and the smell of fresh pine and homemade gifts or none.
Then they stress. The new TV was grand and everybody was happy for a nanosecond. Maybe a new car will fix it...
And then comes tax season and insurance payments and all the bills.
And everybody flips out.
It has been this way for as long as I have been alive. I cannot remember when i last got money back. I am ok with paying to live in a country that used to be one I recognized as humane.
But really, seriously...it is the SAME every year. it is built in cultural. It is fish in water who cannot transition to a new way of being where everything isn't quite so easy....yet still more privileged than most.
Be grateful. Listen to the birds in the morning if they don't annoy you cause of a hangover or if you're not a morning person.
find something, anything, to be happy about.
Or you are just plain missing all of it....everything that matters.
Pay your taxes and live and love and shut the hell up and be grateful.
Says me.
Americans have been conditioned to spend more than they have and to believe in consumerism and that money equals happiness. We are spoiled, arrogant, empirialist and feel we are entitled and have bought into some obscene idea of democracy that doesn't and hasn't existed for ages.
I watch as people spend waaay too much for Christmas, a holiday I used to love and not just cause of presents, but family and the smell of fresh pine and homemade gifts or none.
Then they stress. The new TV was grand and everybody was happy for a nanosecond. Maybe a new car will fix it...
And then comes tax season and insurance payments and all the bills.
And everybody flips out.
It has been this way for as long as I have been alive. I cannot remember when i last got money back. I am ok with paying to live in a country that used to be one I recognized as humane.
But really, seriously...it is the SAME every year. it is built in cultural. It is fish in water who cannot transition to a new way of being where everything isn't quite so easy....yet still more privileged than most.
Be grateful. Listen to the birds in the morning if they don't annoy you cause of a hangover or if you're not a morning person.
find something, anything, to be happy about.
Or you are just plain missing all of it....everything that matters.
Pay your taxes and live and love and shut the hell up and be grateful.
Says me.
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