Place. Oddity. »

Was having a long conversation with my daughter the other day as we drove down to Bristol for her second year at uni, about our loathsome education system which aims to produce ‘consumers’ and a docile workforce. We all know (don’t we?!) we are encouraged to consume too much of everything which is why panic sets in at times of economic uncertainty. ” What are we going to do with them all if they don’t shop?” What if they start to think???!!!!!

I’d say that living with less makes us more resourceful. Uncluttering our lives helps us to see the bare-bones of our circumstances. Sharp minds and sofas don’t go together. Coming up with our own solutions for life’s problems makes us stronger and smarter- less dependant in a healthy way. And sometimes there’s just too much advice from so many helpful people which makes it hard to filter or replenish ourselves naturally. So perhaps we’re aiming to be inter-dependant independantly (?). It’s a running joke in my family that I love to buy secondhand things and haggling over a price can be fun. Seriously, we only eat Honey Loops cereal when its buy-one-get-one-free! The art of shopping. Somehow this all fits together.

I can remember fixing my friend Detlef’s Sony Walkman (looong ago) by taking apart an identical working machine and noticing a hair-line crack in the circuit board which I jumped with some copper wire. It cost me nothing but time and I was glad I found the solution.

But that was after Zen-man. Read on.

For a few years in the 80’s I was swimming in spiritual chaos ( I know the taste of that water far too well!) just about afloat on unwritten books full of seemingly unanswered prayers. I had nothing but the clothes I was wearing because my suitcase mysteriously vanished in the last place I stayed. The only other things I ‘owned’ were the thoughts in my head and I hated those anyway. But sometimes you need to be down long enough to appreciate coming up.

That was when Zen-man showed me the way.

He gave Toby-rat (how I felt) a job- in charge of a whole picture framing department which I had to organise and run too. Took me to a large space full of mess and gear and left me to sort it out. Zen-man came back four hours later to see me in a large space full of mess and gear. Quietly, on a long work bench in the middle of the confusion he put a hammer in a small wooden tray and said this is your tool box and walked off. And then the answer came to me.

Answers please? Someone will need to come close to mine before I end this story in my next blog. I shall be meditating………

Written by Toby Warren in Blogs