It is apt that we spent the Summer Soltice – National Indigenous Peoples Day in the mountain, hiking, and appreciating the earth. It’s appropriate that I’m finishing “Brading Sweetgrass” (Please read t if you haven’t. It’s a series of short essays, a very easy but tremendously insightful book)
When I was young, it was all about “getting”. Getting out of poverty. Getting ahead. Getting scholarship. Getting the promotion. Getting that new job title. Getting a house, a car, a retirement plan. Achieving is baked into my DNA, to a point that I vibrate with anxiety whenever I am not achieving.
Dan asked me the other day, “What brings you joy?”
Which, as I get older, and as I try more often to reflect on my Buddhist roots, it’s the non-attachment things that bring me joy. Arts. Gardening. Coaching. Volunteering. Opening schorphandage. Ironically things that have very little or almost nothing to do with material things and getting.
So, as the sun sets behind the mountain, on the longest day of the year, as Indigenous people have always been here before us, I reacquaint myself with mother earth
And ask myself “How can I bring back to the earth what I am taking, and how can I get, and give, in an Honourable and Sustainable way?”
Ah, one more question for the collection of “My life has no answers, just better questions”
Pace Fine Arts 