Too Much

I’m writing this as I’m flying home and I’m thinking why? Why am I doing many of the things I’ve done for so many years and what am I achieving by doing them. Why do any of us want or need more when in reality we already have too much. How much of me am I wasting by not being content with what I do and who I am. Admittedly great experiences in all the physical, emotional and spiritual elements have come to me by not being content but the constant need for more hampers the fulfilment that could be felt by actually having less. The less we have the less we have to look after, the less we have to worry about and the less we need. It really is true that the richest person is the one who wants the least not who has the most.

Later this week I’m visiting the Manchester Northern Quarter Buddhist centre for an evening of poetry. The invitation came out of the blue as I’ve never been there before and yet I’ve heard of it’s beautiful tranquillity many times so the chance to go seemed too good to pass up. So often we are drawn to things that are there to teach us and yet we often simply don’t pick up on the basic calling to learn. An open mind creates a wonderful opportunity to be free and be who you want to be, to live life the way we choose. What better day to think of freedom and independence than 4th July. I suspect that the American reality might be more a case of celebrating for the sake of it than the actual reason behind it but that’s the same the world over, well certainly the western side of it.

The freedom to love is often overlooked by our need for love. Love generates love and is a positive confirmation of how we can feel. When we give love to others we receive an ever greater blessing in return. How much love we give cannot be measured but if we can give more than we receive we will often be surprised by those who admire us from afar. Recently I received a lovely email saying how much I was being missed after only two weeks of my six month commitment in the South. When we lose someone forever we really have to come to terms with a different sort of loss. Knowing that we will never see that certain person again in the human body can be a devastating blow particularly if the considered judgment had been for a long time ahead.

You’ve probably gathered I’m mourning the loss of a loved one, it comes to us all at some point in our lives. As we get older it happens more frequently and yet we aren’t able to handle it any better. When we lose anything of value we feel the hurt of not having it not the actual loss of the possession so the best route to not feeling the pain of loss is not to own anything. That goes for people too, we can’t possess another person so when they leave us we have to celebrate what we had with them not dwell on what we don’t have any longer. It’s tough not to be sad when we hurt but thinking the right way about the things that hurt us help us to be strong and come through our pain. We can substitute something or someone to take the place of a loss and that will ease the feelings but we also need to feel the pain of loss to appreciate having it in the first place.

With today’s news of the discovery of the Higgs Boson Particle from the Large Hadron Collider it seems that some of the big things may come out of the small things. I don’t really understand why we need to know why different things have mass or why we need to know what their resistance to movement actually is but I’m sure the discovery will be a bench mark in scientific history. Likewise the passing of life and love is a statement in time, we can never really understand the reasons why we just know it has to happen.

Endeavour to have more by wanting less.