Tag Archives: money

what makes the world go round?

13 Dec

All of us have experienced often the vulnerability of clinging to the money raft on a stormy sea of change!

We are all students of supply and demand.  I have always had enough while also close to the extremes of way more than enough and extremes of need.  I have danced in many arenas and suited up this girl  well enough to fit into them all.   Ease is nice, but stress I found was actually higher in the higher dollar days I knew.  Imagine that!  I had more options, or more created options, that complicated the world I inhabited – I had to learn to navigate for myself the hard way.

Nowadays, I choose to live and interact in the realms where people have known a bit more struggle as opposed to the upwardly mobile movers and shakers.  I have had more eye-to-eye realness in a dollar store than on the she she sides of town.   I  also recognize and am grateful that among the money obsessed, I learned to be myself more clearly.  I learned to walk along my own way; I learned to find the needle of the others along the path in the haystack land of striving .  I got to watch the wheels of karma turn, sometimes, too.

Close to the bone, we have an opportunity to be real.  The struggle can embitter, or the struggle can break open the hard little seed of fear – we can share humanity in the bread line or at the tea party, though the tea party is a bit tougher to enjoy, for me.

The ebb and flow of needs met seems best left to such mysteries as the sea – I move up and down the sandy shore with the rhythms of the earth – I work hard – I try not to worry – I try to share – and not waste – I enjoy the pleasures when they come, often seeking out little indulgences for my tongue, my eyes, my skin that add beauty and joy to my experience and do not cause a moment’s hesitation of ambivalence or guilt.  What is guilt? 🙂

I started my 2nd job yesterday at a senior recreation center – and while the pay is unbelievably low – I liked it.  I feel somewhere deep inside, this is a logical next step  to something else I cannot see yet.   I can teach and also help a bit in a low stress place, full of sunshine through the windows and from within the people who come there.  I feel grateful.

I stare into the fog as it hovers this morning – unable to see but able to sense the green growth spurred on by the bright sun that is obscured but never leaves.

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sketching out life in pencil

18 Aug

drawing ourselves

My life is an experiment.

In the past two years, i walked away from the life i had known – and began sketching the life out anew.  Making such a previously unthinkable step accelerated my journey home.

My life has been a study on the flow of money, as it is for us all, right?  I’ve lived comfortably by the world’s standards.   But now the things that were a given for most of my life are no longer available.   This is closer to how the rest of the world lives day to day, but no where near the precarious existence the majority of humans content with.   But learning in this immediate world, I see Uncertainty is my teacher, and i have found that she is always up for a cup of tea once I got to know her.

Here is the scenario in this present day unfolding:  I walked in to get my classes for the fall to find that the new health care bill has changed my arrangements quite a bit.  The college has had to cut back adjunct’s classes and pay…

In short, the money issue will need to be figured out.

The experiment:  how to flow into whatever this pay cut means without attachment while creating a life that is sustainable, thriving, and beautiful.  What can I create in this situation?

An earlier manifestation of self would have jumped into panic and reached for anything in desperation…an unsuitable job,  a hasty move, I’m not sure;  I’m not that person anymore – haven’t been for a while.  I do sometimes wake in the night and realize in my rhinoceros mind is charging into heart thumping destruction scenarios.  That animal can charge on through – that is allowed – but mostly – there is an awareness of a net below the tightrope – i trust and step – and even if i misstep – i know i will land in the same substance that surrounds and flows within – or maybe better still I am actually a bird standing on the wire…I have wings:

birdon a wire

This is what I am getting at:  the magic of the human it seems to me is to not be a victim of our circumstances but to be a creator.  If I can imagine in metaphor all that i am and all that everything is, I draw the truth.   I am the rhinoceros – powerfully charging through – I am the high wire walker – I am the bird –  I am a growing tree that breaks through the atmosphere of heaven – my root ball, the earth – I am the artist – and my life is my masterpiece – not in a worldly viewed way – but in true eyes – a masterpiece of living this life out as presently and instructively as this sketched-out girl can do!

So in the dance of money – which some have spoken of as a spell which has been cast over the human race – how can I dance with these new circumstances?

What can I envision my life to be?  What now has room to arrive by this new opening?

I am calm, centered,  experimenting with doing the next thing as always with great trust.  I am a big earthen pot draining out self –  still and waiting to be filled with a knowing of what I need to know when I need to know it 🙂

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.
…live in the question.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Maturity, one discovers, has everything to do with the acceptance of ‘not knowing.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

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