Aug 2006 - Neil Espie

I can't understand this obsession that we have for material things today. Our lives seem to be all work and the endless collection of things, as if that makes us who we are. And what about those who we stand on in our pursuit of money and power!

This need not be...

Wouldn't it be a different world if we didn't care about what we, or someone else, looked like. If only we didn't care about how much money we had, what things we "owned", or how educated we were.

What if there were no material world? Wouldn't we then be reduced to being who we really are inside, be forced to actually consider ourself, and others, in a different light.

I've often wondered what such a world might be like. If you have a spare few minutes one evening, then go to a quiet room and sit with a friend at say, each end of your bed, with the light out and the drapes and the door closed.

Talk with each other, stop and wait a couple of minutes in silence. Put out your hand and hold the other person's hand. Talk a bit more.

For once in your life you are interacting with the real person that they are; no illusion of every day life about them, no car, house, job, clothes, body image or trappings of power to see - just them.

Of course, it isn't ideal, it would be better with someone you didn't know and haven't seen. Unfortunately their voice would still give away their origins and education, and the subjects you talk about will probably relate to things in the real world. Perhaps it might have been better to talk as two lovers might talk, with love and about revelations of personal self. Imagine doing that with a perfect stranger.

But no matter, shouldn't that be how we look at, and strive in, the real world.

To think of all that daily effort we put into our days, and for what, nothing more than an illusion, what a waste and how sad.