Inner treasure… beyond measure
I have been running a sustainable business for over 20 years . I am now ready to retire from it and do something else with the rest of my…
I have been running a sustainable business for over 20 years . I am now ready to retire from it and do something else with the rest of my life.
One of the new things I think I should be doing is to write articles like here on Medium. I might also go into podcasts and blogs, as well as go on You Tube doing sustainable plant based wholefood cooking with a twist.
One thing I know, whatever I will do, I will give it my very best, my very heart and soul! I want it to be sustainable in more than one sense…
As you can see, I have already started writing here on Medium, and I must admit I absolutely love it!
I think it`s a brilliant concept of attracting amateur writers from all round the world and giving them, giving us a platform from which to express our thoughts, shine our light, share our wisdom, teach and entertain… in other words be a blessing beyond measure!
For we never know where our musings will be read, perhaps at an airport departure lounge in Nepal, in a hospital corridor waiting for health check results in Sydney, on a bench in a N Y park by a lonely person… perhaps even by a deeply depressed person contemplating suicide somewhere!
It could read be anybody, anywhere at any time 24/7/365…
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I think its all to do with our inner treasures really…We all have them, even if we don`t know we have them.
Perhaps we have never scratched the surface and as such, we have never glimpsed that there is something shining there underneath the mud…
It is this solid gold that is the bedrock of us all within us that wants to be found. It is silently waiting there to be discovered one day… and to be brought to the surface.
It is patient as it has plenty of time… since it is from beyond time… as it is eternal.
It is in no hurry, yet it is forever longing to be unearthed, hugged ,acknowledged, appreciated … but most importantly shared!
For imagine yourself as the first and only person landing on Mars, finding a diamond as large as a giant pumpkin but there is no one around to share it with, to share your joy with… and as it is so heavy, it can never be brought back to earth. It would be absolutely pointless!
Well, we are all bigger than a pumpkin and we are already on planet earth, surrounded by well over 8 billion people and innumerable number of animals with whom we can share our treasures.
One of those animals is our blue Burmese cat Peppy.
He is patiently sitting by my leg and while I am writing this, he is purring happily while rubbing himself on my leg. Sometimes, I lean down to him and stroke him, to reassure him that I am not ignoring him, and more importantly that I love him…
He is now nearly 18 years old and apart from him having kidney problems, (usual for cats at this ripe age) he is still going strong… thank God!
We exchange our treasures with him and have done so for the past 18 years.
We give him our hearts and our best care possible, and he gives us his all in return in every possible way he can. He is so generous and consistently loving that it is amazing to see.
We have learnt a lot from him. One of the things he showed us that we were wrong in believing we are dog lovers.
My wife and I have always thought we were dog lovers, but now we know that we are cat lovers too. I suppose all animals contain that certain treasure that once found in them, one is hooked good and proper!
As such, we live on a purely plant based diet, and let the animals live too.
I think once we see the treasure in the other, regardless of human or animal… we are different towards them and value them… in fact properly love them. That treasure within us all is the essence of us all, regardless of who or what we are, human or animal.
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Back in the eighties, during my years in the restaurant business in Soho, I have spent a lot of time between shifts sitting on a bench in Soho Square.
I used to have 3 hours to kill in the afternoon, so I have either walked to discover the entire central London areas of Soho, Covent Garden, Piccadilly and Mayfair, or if I was really tired I sat on a bench somewhere.
When it rained, I used to go into St Patrick`s Church in Soho Square for prayers and the occasional nod off. There is no place to find solace and a good place to sleep between prayers, than a dark church right in the epicentre of a bustling metropolis like London.
However, at other times when the sun was out, my place was on the bench observing the myriad of people around me.
I found it absolutely fascinating that as soon as the sun came out, people were sunbathing all around me, completely oblivious to the fact that there was a bee hive of mad activity around them.
Sometimes a tramp sat down next to me, or I sat next to one and we often begun talking. At first we both were weighing up the other, but we soon started to relax and at times I unexpectedly glimpsed into the treasures buried under those rugs.
I have often had the most amazing conversation with different gentlemen of the road, who were here today and gone tomorrow… I have learnt a lot from them, as they opened up to me about their sad lives.
They have taught me humility, appreciation and reverence as well as respect. Things I probably would have never learnt at any other school, but the school of the down and out.
I still remember some of those stories they have told me, of how they ended up from being on the top, to being at the bottom… withing a very short space of time!
I was so scared just in case those things might happen to me too one day…
And despite my best effort to avoid stumbling, it had happened to me too!
After 10 years of hard work in the restaurant business in London, during which time I have climbed to the top, within a very short space of time, I found myself plunging down, nearly ending up on one of those benches. There was not much in it, probably just a few hundred £ separated me from zero… followed by sub zero.
Yet, the treasures that I may have had within me were never at risk, regardless of how high or how close I was to zero. Looking back I can see that it is not like the stock market and the property market that nearly wiped me out in the early nineties.
Its not like a roller coaster going up and going down… again and again. It is steady, it is solid, it is reliable it is unchanging…it is sustainable …in fact it is eternal!
So concluding, I can say that it is our inner treasure trove that we should be concentrating more on rather than on our visible wealth. Our outer wealth is put out to so many variables, most of them outside of our control.
There are wars going on, the world is on fire, there are so many worrying factors on the horizon… all effecting our lives .
Yet, if we realize that we are already more than millionaires whether we are dressed in fine clothes or dirty rugs… we will endure whatever comes next!