Embracing a New Dream
Sitting in traffic, I make a prayer for patience, compassion, and understanding. To withhold judgment. To, as it is written in the Tao, love the world as myself. So that I can care for all things. All that lives and has passed on into another plane of existence. Where clouds manifest. As I inch my way down I-80, I glare at the new developments all along it, the cluster of McMansions marketed as our supposed dream. Material gains are egoic dreams, converging to keep me away from the peace and sanctity of my home. The great beast of traffic has got me. I blame the world for my frustration. I blame poor infrastructure, individualism, not enough foresight, not enough care, greed, materialism. I blame traffic for my misery. I think, The old developer is still at it, up to his antics. I have been kept away from peace all because of someone’s profit margin. Then I remember. It is not possible to keep me away from my peace by anything other than myself.
It will be challenging to accept the material world as myself. I resist and reject this. Does this mean I also reject a part of myself? That material part of myself that is woven into a material world of tangible things. How do I love the basset parts of myself? How do we love our most greedy parts? How do we care for that which goes against our values? I think it must be the same way I love and care for the most damaged parts of my love’s skin. How I, with a clear vision of his healing, lovingly rub Shea butter into his skin, afflicted with a bout of psoriasis.
I realize the people who buy these homes only want a good life, but I also believe they–we– have been fooled. Duped into thinking the Developed World is who we are. I long for a development that consorts with the land, that thinks ahead about infrastructure, and isn’t driven by greed. I imagine a developer who cares for the people who will live in the new homes, as well as the birds and plants that will live with them.
I content myself in acknowledging how I have been awakened and how I won’t be sold on the dream of man to make a buck. I relish my dream of clean running water, open river ways for the salmon to spawn. An open sky replete with birds. My dream is to live in harmony and peace with the hummingbird. I no longer think of land for sale, but land for care.
