2016-07-27

We spend so much of our lives on the clock for someone else that when we’re finally home, we convert it into a cave.  It’s possible now to do everything from home - work, shop, even order gourmet meals.   People who “spelunk” explore caves, and it becomes kind of a way of life for them as well.  What is it we love about nesting?

Maybe if there was a way to make work more enjoyable for people, they wouldn’t dread Monday, and their bodies wouldn’t speak for them by getting sick all the time so they had to – oh darn! – miss work.

Why isn’t there a course offered in grade school about how to find your forté?  I think there should be an inner guidance counselor to teach kids to listen to their own innate wisdom.  To blaze their own trail, find their own tribe.  I think the alpha and omega of an education is to learn critical thinking.  Once you know what you know, you can adjust it as you go along.  Everything we learn has been taught to us by someone in a position of authority, and “conventional wisdom” changes all the time.  Who’s to say what’s true on a tilted, spinning orb held up by forces known variously as gravity and God?  Isn’t it possible that we may actually contain all the answers inside us?

So we spend all of our lives in caves of different dimensions.  First, we’re in a crib, then a classroom, then a cubicle, and ultimately, a coffin.  What if we set our minds to it and designed our own lives according to what lights us up from the inside?  Would the world stop spinning tomorrow?  Not if the forces I know on a first name basis have any say in the matter.  Heavens, no!

  Wherever I May Roam

In my mind, it's all settled.
I'm surrounded by the ones I love
and the things that tickle me: my hazelnut candle.
Castanets. A turquoise feather boa.
This might seem frivolous, but these little tchotchkes
make me feel at home wherever I am.
It doesn't matter where we put down roots
just as long as our branches reach toward the sun.
Be with us as we roam and ramble
then bring us back to the things that matter.
Help us to bloom where we're planted and fly free in our minds.
Most of all, set up a home in our hearts.

-Ruth Williams



 


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