The Rich Man’s Dream
April 11th, 2008 by Richard CockrumWhat do you own? Do you own your house? Do you own your car? Do you own the computer sitting in front of you?
If you don’t pay your property taxes what happens to your house? If you don’t make the payments on your computer what will happen to it?
If you die, what will you have left?
Here today
Here to play
Toys of life
For which we pay
Tomorrow gone
None to stay
Naught to say but
Here today
Here to play.
Technorati Tags: detachment
Popularity: 12% [?]
Del.icio.us
reddit
April 11th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Rick, I know what you are saying. Very Zen. I feel the same way. I look at the boys flying around the cul-de-sac on thier shiny bicycles. Then I step into an executives office and I see the hand made crafts she purchased from artisans in Bhutan, and I think ‘having’ things is worthless, but experiencing things is not. So I try to care less about what I own and focus more on the experience. It helps. But I need money to have certian experiences I wish to have…
April 11th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
I can’t comment on the boys or the executive. In their own way, they’re buying experiences, too - excitement, beauty, the feel of the air as it rushes by.
I think I’m trying to understand myself as much as anything, and make sense of Asian religious concepts in a form that fits today. I keep coming back to this - the main goal for any of us is to be happy, but the form of the pursuit we’re taught isn’t effective.
I don’t know if you saw it or not, but a post I did a couple of weeks ago is relevant ( How Money Can Buy Happiness ).
April 13th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Your poem made me both smile and feel sad. I smiled because I love the word “play.” I was so good at the art of play when I was a kid. Back then I didn’t know it was an art form, since for most children it’s the most natural thing in the world (at least growing up in the 50’s). I feel sad because I have not set up my current life to incorporate more play. Yet it need not be a big deal either. It can be fostered through the attitude of how I choose to respond in the moment, as I did last Friday when I laughed and joked with my business partners amidst the work we did all day.
April 14th, 2008 at 12:03 am
That’s a key right there, Deb. If what we’re doing doesn’t foster a sense of joy or satisfaction within, we may want to think about why we’re doing it.
I love your categorization of play as an artform. If art is play, and art is creative expression, wouldn’t that mean our lives, as creative expressions of our selves, are play?