What a paradox: you’re told to be yourself while having to abide by thousands of limitations. Schools offer you 20, 30 choices or so. Do they want you to be what you are, or what that they need?
The first question I face when people meet me is: “Why are you barefoot?”
This time I’ll answer with a question to you: “Can you draw a picture, a symbol, an analogy of freedom?”
To me, it is a woman on a galloping unsaddled horse … riding across a field with her hair loose and barefoot (both the woman and the horse).
Others see me rejecting the cage and choosing freedom (to go around barefoot, for example). They see this as a rebellious act. What should this teach me about my society?
All measures and values are biased, partial. The best way to experience the world–for me–is barefoot. Such an experience comes by making use of suffering.
Can you survive in a creative way, joyfully, and with the spirit of abundance even in raw simplicity? Or do you condition your joy with having?
You have the option to live simply and enjoy fully whatever you have, or you can inflate the potential for enjoyment, hoarding possessions, but hardly ever relaxing and enjoying them fully.
Nowadays, you’re bound to be socially responsible, too! You’re expected to be proactive, to initiate progress. Living simply doesn’t mean renouncing the world. It means conserving the energy instead of dissipating it, so you can make a real impact.
I’ve spent many nights Couchsurfing, sleeping in a hammock, while my days were spent talking to the politicians in the EU parliament. We’ve discussed global problems, they are unable to solve. They are aware social problems can only be solved by society, by people. They can’t touch the people from their offices in Brussels.
I can’t touch all the people either. But still, I can touch many …
I live! I consume my simple life with a big spoon. When experiences don’t abound, there’s always abundance inside. Then I step outside and present my joy to the world. I’m marrying the fun and the work.
Yesterday someone asked me what my goal in life was.
Since I was 12, I said, I thought my life made no sense. No one’s life does, actually. You’re supposed to study, work, raise children, retire, and die.
I wanted something deeper. I looked for it in Eastern traditions. They led me back to where I started–at myself. Looking inside, I realized all I need to learn is to “perceive clearly” and to “respond accurately.”
There are no bad situations and feelings. The winning in a game of cards isn’t determined by what you do with a good hand, but by what you do with a bad hand.
You might be holding a bad hand compared to what the global powers are holding (with an unlimited stack of aces in their sleeves). Well, their hand is only stronger than yours by their rules of the game. You have no chance of winning pinned to their game board and their ways.
Who are you really? A conglomeration of this and that. A unity of spirit, dancing through the mazes of life.
We’re the same, you and I.
Are we one? Or are we community?
