Peace, love, joy and happiness isn’t for everybody. People seem to want to eat, mate and avoid getting killed, and if we can manage that we’re hesitant to ask for more.
It makes sense that we prefer to stay where we are but have our situation be different. We don’t want to get sick, don’t want the electricity cut off, don’t want a flat tire or a snake under the hood, don’t want anybody to yell at us about anything, and don’t want political parties calling for donations.
Is the list of what we don’t want longer than what we do want? I don’t remember the circumstance, but I do remember the incident when someone explained to me the importance of doing something pointless for at least an hour a day.
Now, a lot of what we do is pointless – we turn the music down when we’re lost. Only wear socks and earrings that match. Try to sneeze with our eyes open. Test a plate the waiter says is hot. Pet Rock. Selfies. Click the tongs before turning the zucchini. Call it Thanksgiving instead of Thankstaking. Write.
We’re confusing because we’re confused. We know that thoughts, dreams, and words have energy, are energy. We don’t see what we think or say, so it’s hard to give thoughts and words the notoriety they deserve.
Our thoughts and words seem like appendages of matter, you know? They’re not. Surely, they’re not.
Matter is our body, not our mind. We rub cream on our face and paste on our teeth. We clasp and stroke each other. We cut our hair, crack our knuckles, put drops in our eyes, and think we look and feel better.
But if we didn’t harness the energy of thought, and put it into words, would we be a simple body that just looks up to determine if it’s raining and not care if it is?
Life as we are experiencing it is probably not any slower or faster than it ever was. We live a decade or two longer than we did 100 years ago, but that’s because we’re cleaner.
And we have the internet, which is just as jolting as Gutenberg’s printing press that made calligraphy obsolete and was cussed as destroying civilization.
It seems that 3-D printing, which is about to put schools, homes and communities together without cutting trees or mixing cement, is so out there it might work. It took a lot of thought to simplify our condition. Words and thoughts are lightning fast, while matter is kind of the tortoise. Slower, but it moves.
Sometimes we get mixed up, for instance having an opinion on how Melinda and Bill Gates should split ever how many billions of everything they have. They both seem to understand that prosperity and wealth are two different things and neither means rich. Prosperity is simple and many people achieve it because they are successful – as humans, artists, spouses, caretenders, workers.
Prosperity is an energy, not an accumulation of stuff we can touch.
Wealth is when you have a lot of money and few obligations. Rich is when you have money and a lot of expenses.
Melinda and Bill – if you’re splitting up, split it up. One divide, one choose.
Prosperity means that when we do what we like we don’t get so mad.