On Things

       
People who say that things don’t matter do not know where to shop! In saying this I do not mean simply grabbing up items and rushing to a sales clerk. I am speaking of the fine art of a lost activity called “window shopping.” When I was a girl growing up in San Francisco, Ca., my mother and I would dress ourselves nicely and take public transit to the downtown area, which then held major department stores like Macy’s The Emporium and I. Magnin’s. There still are major shopping centers, of course, but the experience is quite different. Long ago we could not get an online peek at major sales on a computer and click a button to order. We had to take ourselves on site to see what the windows and the counters offered. These trips were not usually about purchasing items. Mostly they were a sentient experience that allowed my mother and me the chance to fill the rods and cones of our eyes with beautiful colors…lustrous fabrics, velvety chair coverings, soft window closures elegantly draped, pleasures to the eyes, textures to be touched and some fragrant scents to be inhaled. We did not go to buy …as lower income people we did not have that kind of money…we came simply to enjoy. And we had to make the effort to go where some of the beautiful things were, which we gladly did. The journey downtown, after all, was part of the experience. Consequently I grew up with and consciously retained the ability to completely be delighted by beautiful surroundings around me…without lusting to own them.

Any "thing" can be changed...

I bring up this little trip down memory lane simply to remind us that we live in a world of things, and to either despise or demand them is missing the point. Things give us perspective; they give us outlets for self expression, and if we forget their proper places, they will define us. We will need to remember that the things of our lives come about through the nature of our thoughts. They are not beginnings; they are ends, and if we do not like these ends, we can go back and review the beginnings. Any “thing” can be changed but only if there is a new beginning that precedes it.

Our permanence...

Things come and eventually they will all go, but in the part of us that participates in all this…herein lies our permanence.

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