In a typical quantity-focused culture, which Facebook is part of (through no direct fault of their own), we have, obviously, a focus on numbers and quantities. So if I have 970 likes, I am urged to get the number up to 1,000. If I had 1,000, the FB bots would urge me to get to 5,000. And so on. This is a symbol of what we all go through. Own a house? Not enough. You have to pay it off, or sell it at a profit and get a bigger one. Healthy kids? Not enough. You have to find all their flaws and get them fixed with therapy and/or medication, even if theres fundamentally nothing wrong with them. Have a healthy body? Not enough. You need to be thin and look like people in TV ads selling beer. And so on. And so on. If we listen to these voices, we will sabotage our blessed life, a life in which people get to communicate through amazing means such as FB. A life in which most people have enough to eat almost all the time. A life in which many diseases in this part of the world have been eradicated. A life in which we have dozens, if not hundreds, of great teachers of yoga, meditation, music, art, available to us. A life in which many of us have the opportunity to live awake and aware of the preciousness of our situation on this planet, its precariousness, its need for nurturing. Nurturing. Not numbers. Nurture quality, nurture awareness, nurture lovingkindness. It cannot and should not involve bean-counting. It is the opposite of bean-counting-greed. It is generosity of spirit and love of life itself.
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 19:09:32 +0000