For too long we have been a country that has had too much, so much that whole government agencies have gotten together to decide how to dispose of our excess. That excess has been useable produce, overproduced goods, and even an excess of money when we were as a nation free of debt. From the first immigrants who came to this country, the English, Spanish, and so on, to now, we have had the attitude, “Expand, expand, expand.” With this attitude we have wasted and polluted our land, run through our resources, and have found it impossible to live with the native inhabitants as well as each other. The big wide America has become a place somewhat filled with despairing people who have lost their homes, their jobs and their hopes, causing us to take pause and assess our expansive approach.
We have been members at a feast. Our tables have been filled with a variety of delicacies to choose from. We have had man and beast. We have had mountains and deserts. We have had land and sea. We have expanded our borders imperialistically and with the same attitude of expansion to incorporate other countries and their resources. Our table is spoiling and we cannot stand to put the meal to our lips. We can no longer engorge ourselves on a rotting meal, causing some to open our eyes and take pause and others to unsuccessfully revive the feast. What can we preserve? What do we need to toss? We can preserve nothing forever. We need to ration and allow what is fallow to breathe and replenish.
Individuals have taken limited dollars to buy unnecessary items packaged in commodities that will be discarded. Not even 100 years ago would people dream of buying packaged meals but would cook their own from scratch. Not even 50 years before that would people dream of buying clothing from the store. They would sew their own. We have had so much money that we’ve forgotten how wasteful it is to purchase items we could make ourselves, given the expertise. It takes less for me to bake my own bread and prepare my own meals than it does to purchase these items in the store. I begin to take breath in slowly during the few minutes of kneading bread. As I breathe in the aroma, I forget to run here and there to accomplish nothing while expending time. My car is allowed to rest, and I can put up my feet.
We need to realize that time is also a resource that we waste because we believe we will live forever. We waste our health, believing that the vitality we experience today will carry on into the future no matter what we do. We deceive ourselves when we do not recognize that everyone will age and will need the help of another. Some of us blindly carry on our lives as if no one else exists until we end up being forced to depend on others.
There is a natural law of the universe that nothing is permanent and nothing is lost. Animals live to procreate and die. Their flesh and bones decay and turn to dust, and new life springs forth from that dust. Whatever is lost ultimately returns to earth in some form or another. However, we have found a way to discard materials that do not break down and therefore scar the land; but everything will ultimately come to an end, even heavy duty plastic. This earth will come to an end some day, a few billion years in the future. Life as we know it will not exist within a few million years. Even microbes will not exist much beyond that, but the earth will go on until it is absorbed by the sun, which will also fade away.
The God that we believe in may appear as the light we experience upon arising only to diminish some day. We could understand that while we live, we pass away. What will we leave for others? What will we leave for another day? What can we salvage from our table? What must we allow to decay?
Whatever you are experiencing today—whether it is prosperity or the lack thereof—take a breath. Life as we experience it is only temporal. Therefore, this too shall pass and tomorrow is another day.
By Lisa Trimarchi
