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Atopia
Thinking about my basic goals in life - what drives me - my purpose seems to reach a level where I don't have to worry about money, or my health or that of those I love - that seems to be the core of what I think I need, to be able to function and reach for things above that baseline. Not that I think I need to be rich, just not to worry about 2 to 3 months from now, being able to pay the bills.
But then I think, what if every one didn’t have to worry about money, what if everyone were healthy, what if we all lived a long life until we died in our sleep. Would that be a happy world? Would it be productive? Would we still have goals we wanted to achieve? Would we take that for granted? Would it be a Utopia or boring? Having those worries taken away, would we reach higher to create a more beautiful, spiritual world? If hunger and pain weren’t a problem to be solved, where would a lot of people find their purpose? Does the pain and worry make us better human beings? Does that sadness in our lives make the good things more treasured?
Can we accept those things – the accidents, the disease, the need for money – as necessary to life? We always seem to approach them as an unusual happenstance – as something to be fixed or worked through, to get back to what is normal and calm and unstressful. But they are not unusual. They are ongoing and have existed since time began. They are not necessarily bad – they just are.
If we don’t let the bad things in life affect us so much, should our “even keel” force us to not be joyous at the good things in life? Is the goal to not react to either emotion – not to have either emotion, but just to sail down the middle?
No answers.
Regina Calton Burchett
January 30, 2001
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