Every door in this hunting-shack that leads to the outside has a lock; every night, as I practice my tactile awarenesses by stepping gingerly throughout this hovel with the lights off, in pitch-blackness, I activate these locks one after the other, with a few flicks of my fingers locking out the dark, the cold, and all things unforeseeable. And yet, every night, after basking briefly in the fleeting surety of my false security, I laugh out loud at myself for ever having believed such nonsense in the first place.
Locks only keep out friends and people who might desire to enter one's home but who are too nice to smash in one of its windows. Robbers and thieves are not deterred by locks – they never have been; they never will be; and there is nothing one could ever do, short of encasing one's entire home in a shell of steel-reinforced concrete twenty feet thick and never leaving, that would be able to prevent a dedicated and determined person from gaining access to its dusty interior. (I doubt that even such measures would keep out someone with time, a cutting torch, and a pneumatic jackhammer on his side.) Locking one's doors at night is a good idea, especially where I live out in the sticks where there is really no one else around to watch my door or to keep an eye on things regularly; and few insurance companies are likely to compensate for stolen goods if they discover that exterior doors had been left unlocked; for the most part,however, leaving doors unlocked is a sign of one's abiding faith in the goodness of mankind, a beacon of love to one's neighbors, proof of one's detachment from material goods, and a strong indication of how little value one places on the trappings of the harsh outer world and how greatly one cherishes the tender peace within.
A better writer than I once urged us to invite in anyone who knocks on our doors, to grant entry to any person coming to call – be that person angry or joyful, bearing arms or bringing gifts – into the shadowy recesses of our homes, and, thereby, to allow him to plumb the deepest depths of our buoyant and exuberant souls. I struggle to follow this saying, preferring too often the calm of safety to the excitement of risk, trying too often to erect walls against the messy Great Unknown instead of welcoming it in with open arms. If I have learned anything during the past three-and-a-half decades, however, it is that, no matter how tightly I shut my eyes or stop up my ears, the Universe always finds a way to access those areas I would prefer to keep hidden, and to pierce such veils as my ego tells me I need to keep in place. Slowly, then, and only with considerable effort, am I learning to let go of my fears and to drink as deeply as I can of the horrible beauty of this wonderful thing we call life. Mahalo.
© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)
Showing posts with label comfort. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comfort. Show all posts
19 October 2012
11 April 2012
on luxury & comfort
This morning, while waiting for father sun to awaken, I heard on the radio an advertisement for a new motor-vehicle made by Lincoln. In this commercial, the company touted the vehicle's salient features, among them “organically tanned leather from Scotland, French stitching, and Moroccan (or Algerian) wood accents.” Beyond my abject loathing for a supposedly American company that pays non-Americans to make pretty, expensive cars for gullible Americans to buy, I find myself seething with rage at the notion in this country that we deserve things such as finery, luxury, and comfort.
If while growing up the the writers of the Declaration of Independence had been told that they deserved luxury, that comfort were their ultimate goal, that it were acceptable for them to let their guards down and to relax in a plush and reclining chair, they would not likely have had the stones to rise up and to spit in the faces of their foreign slave-masters. If the frontiersmen had grown up convinced that luxury and comfort were things they deserved, they probably would never have withstood the privations and hardships associated with crossing continents. If Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King Jr. had become accustomed to soft and easy lives, they would likely have changed neither history nor the fate of millions of otherwise down-trodden and wretched souls.
Attention, citizens of America: life is not comfortable, easy, or luxurious. There is no reason you cannot be Happy in your life, or Safe (these being the primary purposes of government, according to the Declaration), but please do not allow yourself to become addicted to the notion that it will be convenient, plush, or pillow-topped. The more one's supposed luxury, the more one has to lose when one's house burns or floods or gets crushed by falling trees; the more one relies on comfort, the greater will be the fall when hardship returns; the more one believes in the lies spewing from the twisted suck-holes of advertisers, the less likely one is to be able to make do with less; and the more one denigrates oneself by driving a car, the longer one is trapped inside a glass-walled, cash-guzzling, burning metal box.
Today, our nation faces trying times: our people lack above-poverty-level employment, our corporations maximize profits at any and all cost to the worker and to the environment, our politicians have been corrupted by Special Interest, half of our “representatives” in the legislature are millionaires, and our government is a tyrannical juggernaut that wages war upon the Liberty of its own citizens. This is not the time to seek comfort, or luxury – this is the time to batten down the hatches and to prepare for the worst (while still keeping a song in one's heart). The underlying reason for the focus on luxury and comfort of late is that these foul conditions trick the person into thinking that she can rest, that she has done her duty to herself and to humanity, that she deserves certain things that only money can buy. Money cannot buy Happiness, nor can it buy Safety, but it can be used as a tool for self-enslavement to supposedly necessary external conditions. Therefore, the patriot relies on nothing but her bright and bursting spirit; she needs nothing but the calluses growing on her strong, slender hands. Rise up, my fellow Americans: shake off the cruel yoke of luxury, and discard the rusty chains of comfort, because your nation, and Honest Abe, need you strong, sane, and self-reliant.
場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit
If while growing up the the writers of the Declaration of Independence had been told that they deserved luxury, that comfort were their ultimate goal, that it were acceptable for them to let their guards down and to relax in a plush and reclining chair, they would not likely have had the stones to rise up and to spit in the faces of their foreign slave-masters. If the frontiersmen had grown up convinced that luxury and comfort were things they deserved, they probably would never have withstood the privations and hardships associated with crossing continents. If Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King Jr. had become accustomed to soft and easy lives, they would likely have changed neither history nor the fate of millions of otherwise down-trodden and wretched souls.
Attention, citizens of America: life is not comfortable, easy, or luxurious. There is no reason you cannot be Happy in your life, or Safe (these being the primary purposes of government, according to the Declaration), but please do not allow yourself to become addicted to the notion that it will be convenient, plush, or pillow-topped. The more one's supposed luxury, the more one has to lose when one's house burns or floods or gets crushed by falling trees; the more one relies on comfort, the greater will be the fall when hardship returns; the more one believes in the lies spewing from the twisted suck-holes of advertisers, the less likely one is to be able to make do with less; and the more one denigrates oneself by driving a car, the longer one is trapped inside a glass-walled, cash-guzzling, burning metal box.
Today, our nation faces trying times: our people lack above-poverty-level employment, our corporations maximize profits at any and all cost to the worker and to the environment, our politicians have been corrupted by Special Interest, half of our “representatives” in the legislature are millionaires, and our government is a tyrannical juggernaut that wages war upon the Liberty of its own citizens. This is not the time to seek comfort, or luxury – this is the time to batten down the hatches and to prepare for the worst (while still keeping a song in one's heart). The underlying reason for the focus on luxury and comfort of late is that these foul conditions trick the person into thinking that she can rest, that she has done her duty to herself and to humanity, that she deserves certain things that only money can buy. Money cannot buy Happiness, nor can it buy Safety, but it can be used as a tool for self-enslavement to supposedly necessary external conditions. Therefore, the patriot relies on nothing but her bright and bursting spirit; she needs nothing but the calluses growing on her strong, slender hands. Rise up, my fellow Americans: shake off the cruel yoke of luxury, and discard the rusty chains of comfort, because your nation, and Honest Abe, need you strong, sane, and self-reliant.
場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit
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