recession
Listening to an Alan Watts lecture the other day, I was reminded of this idea of nothingness. The comment that we are agitated and bothered by ‘nothingness’ is completely true. One of the hardest things to do is to sit with yourself and do nothing. But in those moments of nothingness, something arises. A thought, creativity or something. Its what humans do. When humans are confined, imprisoned, locked or trapped into some kind of living or struggle, the emptiness that they feel or experience is challenged by a feeling of trying to fill it with something. Here in these tense moments our imaginations open and our minds and reveal things that could be completely obvious or quite profound. Ingenious uses of ideas, material and space is completely natural sense and within us all, but somehow flourishes in the darkness.
So then I started thinking about this world-wide recession, and how it is bringing about a sort-of feeling of nothingness also. A different kind of nothingness for sure, but one people are getting very agitated over nonetheless. Its a material or economic nothingness, but our culture is so at one with the dollar, it seems that that money is somehow the very some-thingness of their life. I learned I had this cultural gene inside of me as I immersed myself in Panama and realized that the vastness of the American way of materialism and wealth is unknown even to ourselves. I feel that we have very little concept of the immense opportunity we have by just being born American. So many others in the world survive on so very little, yet Americans believe that the luxuries they enjoy like $5 lattes and Outback Steakhouse, are actual needs, and without them they have ‘nothing’. I don’t mean to trivialize what hardships people are going through right now, but in comparison to what I see here in Panama, the Americans are quite dependent on money and material wealth.
As a contrasting example, I went to find my neighbors’ gardener to help me with a small project one Saturday. I knew where he lived as I had given him a ride home a few times before. I went to the road entrance to his house and walked up to the house. The bright green house is small, tipico construction with a little front porch, but in the front yard, another house had been built. It was a home constructed with rusted, probably discarded, corrugated metal walls and roof. Barely a box. They had clothing draped to dry and air out over the openings that had been cut for windows. I had no idea that they were living like this. But despite their having nothing, they routinely share the fruits of their trees with me, someone they know has the money to buy oranges and bananas.
These lessons I have learned on nothingness, material nothingness and mindlessness, my mind and heart are spawned with new approach and appreciation for nothing, as it is really something.