Contemplative Turtle
January 5th, 2022
A turtle my 27-year-old son brought home is a mystery to me.
It helps me contemplate.
We are entangled in a culture where productivity, efficiency and affluence matter.
The truth of the matter at least for me is that we are so far away from each other.
"Good morning..." "See you!" When I greet someone, it's not because it's a habit of a society. The moment being with someone and experiencing joy, pain, anger or consolation from that encounter is a way of communicating with God. It sometimes takes time to process feelings and thoughts, but those prayerful moments will certainly help to clear our mind.
Images and great achievements by celebrities might leave us satisfied and apparently connected to someone or something. Are we really?
Consumerism and capitalism will continue to exist another 100 years or so for sure and we cannot deny that our lives enormously depend on the society enmeshed with those Cs. (Otherwise I wouldn't be typing those words and edit on my computer screen using electricity in my cozy room!)
Very often I feel sick of consciously or unconsciously doing things I don't want to do, in order to live. I might be eating chocolate whose ingredients came from a far-away plantation where children are being exploited. We are surely enmeshed in the present system in a most unimaginable way and it makes us feel that we cannot escape from harming others at the expense of our own comfort.
Yet I won't stop trying to communicate with our Creator as a teeny short-lived creature placed on earth. In the meantime, Chao will surely outlive my uneasiness on earth.