I am on the verge of creating a new art work. I am going to need several yards of brown, blue, green and yellow fabric.
I started Dandelion Wine tonight by Ray Bradburry. It is full of beautiful pose and childhood memories brought to life as only a true writer can do.
Good authors always make me want to write, good painters always make me want to paint. and yet in the business I chose to pursue it was the lack of good that pressed me forward. And yet, even in my own company it is something I am still fighting against. The lack of good. The marginal is not acceptable. The unlearning is not acceptable. Nothing should be prepared for sale unless it is beautiful, useful, and nearly exceptional.
What is it that drives us to do better? Is it merely to one up someone? I don't think so. I believe it is our destiny, to become perfect. To strive towards perfect. To create something to honor the perfectness in the world around as- nature is perfect. Can we honor her in mere capitalism? No, we must honor her with art, with love, with mimicking her perfect systems and learning how to become one with them.
And yet one must wonder when we look at the wal marts of the world, if they understood the purpose of business.
The real purpose of business is not to create a profit. It is to create a prophet- to do something so well that people can't help but want to (and do) throw money your dirrection.
Consumerism has yet to understand this. It is the theory of buying 1 good one, and skipping the 99. Of filling our lives with things that will work well- for many years and not bothering with the rest. Again, it is to honor what nature gives us and not to take unnecessarily.
It is also the theroy of doing for ourselves, instead of hiring (or paying) others to do for us. For when we do not kneed our own bread we loose something. When we do not raise our own children, we lose a lot. When we let money stop us from doing the daily life affirming rituals that have long bound us to the earth, we have lost our understanding, our connection with the life giver.
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Now I am not saying that letting others help you is wrong. They need the chance to do service for you, and you need a chance to do service for them.
Where is crosses the line is when you pay them and it becomes just a job, a way for them to pay others to do their work for them.
It is only through service that we can become sanctified, pure, holy. And to deny someone the chance to give service to you is to deny them that opportunity. Meanwhile, to miss out on a chance to help another is to deny yourself the opportunity to become pure.
We need our connections, we need out purity, we need to work for our daily bread, we need to serve for our hearts.
It is important for each person to define what is important to them, based on their life path. What is their definition of beautiful, of good, of better, of acceptable, of what is real and what is not, of the meaning in their life, and how to honor it all, hopefully without needing to create a disturbance in the process of honoring their definitions.
You have been given many examples of different definitions of how to live and now you can decide for yourself, what to take and what to leave, and create your own path, define your own path. I see the world as opportunity for definition.
And money has it's place, just knowing when and where is key.
Thank you for this post. It is good to read someone else's definitions.
LA
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