I procrastinated writing today because I was trying to figure out what to say about something that was obvious and common: there is nothing to add to the description of what greed does to a person. Last night I drove someone whose being has been twisted because of greed, someone that we have been driving for a while, someone who I observe although he has no recollection of me. No one of any note, nor difference from many others. Three days ago I was sitting with Bert, sitting in the hallway of the convalescent home, sitting there without agenda. It was the contrast of these two situations that I thought I would write about, and now understand that there is nothing about greed that hasn’t been writ for millenia; and that greed is a boring subject.
What can be describe is this business of sitting with someone who is dying, who knows that I am with a hospice group, has agreed to have hospice assistance, who is doing what dying people do naturally.
Maybe absence of agenda is the core, no chore or topic that requires attention, maybe it is that absence that is special about this experience. I am not there with promise or requirement, there is no possibility of returning health, there are no battles to be fought, no love to win or lose, no need for obfuscation. It is being in its pure form: I think that the reason I do this is so that I can have this experience, know this rare feeling, share it with my good friend who doesn’t remember my name.
I realize that I could make a list of the greedy guy’s stuff, his airplane, ground vehicles, horses, hobbies, ownerships, estates, the pain he has caused to those close, to those who barely touch his sphere. I couldn’t make a list for Bert, I know of nothing, care not about any of it, there is no list nor agenda: there is just being in its pure form.
I don’t know if any of this is relevant to anyone else’s life, it isn’t the kind of experience I encounter with others, as I am out and about; I write it so that I understand better, and will use that understanding as I go on my way towards that end. That is the way I see it this morning.
There is nothing to write about the bird feeder, other than it is gone, an objection by the landlord, so it is now gone. The birds were fun while they were around, sadness that they are gone, and there will always be other things to fill their absence.
Roger, Tell me if you have/have not received my emails. Tanya