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An estate sale. This person has (had?) some nice stuff, mainly Southwestern in theme.
The goddess of love herself, Aphrodite, does not love everyone and everything. When mated to the god Hephaestus via the will of Zeus, Aphrodite is unfaithful to her husband with one who is more her choice, Ares. Her passionate affair with the stunningly beautiful Ares serves as a welcome end to her mismatched pairing with the crippled, ugly god of blacksmiths.
The story of Aphrodite and her failed first marriage is a lesson in saying No. The legend whispers in our ear, “You don’t have time to do the things you do not love or are being coerced into loving, and furthermore, you don’t even have time to attune yourself to them.” The previous statement illustrates why it is so wrong to settle in a relationship or to marry for finances or convenience: the one who settles (let’s call her the Settler) ends up over-sensitizing herself to the wrong person in an act of bad faith. Inevitably, there is a part of the Settler that ends up hating her mate because the Settled-for can never measure up to the ideal the Settler truly desires.
How Not to Achieve Your Dream Career
When I was younger, I suffered the common delusions of both wanting it all and thinking I could have it. My truest desire as a young person was to become a famous singer-songwriter. When I finished music college, I thought that dream life would fall into my lap. Meanwhile, I worked as a music teacher in several music lesson stores while performing small venues on the weekends, hoping to be discovered. I was easily and hopelessly distracted by various shiny carrots dangled in my general direction. I contemplated going back to school for a more secure job teaching in the schools. I tried to learn about real estate. I started writing novels. I dabbled in everything but I was best at spreading myself too thin.
By far, one of my worst mistakes was getting involved with my local teacher’s association. Flattered because I was sought as an expert, I became involved as a judge in my chapter’s music tests for children ages K-12. Judge duties grew into an appointment as administrator of an exam that saw hundreds of pressure cooker music students flowing through facilities which it was my job to procure, with teachers it was my job to recruit and organize as volunteers, with tests it was my job to get printed. This extremely demanding, often 40 hour a week job (on top of my make-a-living job) was 100 percent uncompensated. To make matters worse, there were a few bad apple teachers who were used to gaming the system. Though the agreement was that by entering students, you would be donating a set amount of hours per student in volunteer time, the richest and most entitled teachers acted exactly as you would expect. They would enter two dozen or so students and then conveniently disappear on luxury vacations when it came time to volunteer for test duties. One chronic vacationer had the gall to call me and leave an angry tirade about how awful I was to expect her to honor the agreement and keep her students out of the test as she would not be there to perform any duties. How dare I spoil her jet plane vacation with her rich husband! I wasted years of my young life on these people... I had my fill. I abdicated the administrative position and quit the organization permanently. By the time I ended my stint as test administrator, I had lost the motivation and desire to perform my own music in public as a career. Perhaps it was a mercy killing: my music never appealed to an audience larger than a few souls scattered across the globe anyway. Either way, I am glad things went the way they did, but if my goal was to become a singer-songwriter, I did a lousy job of achieving that goal. I attuned myself to goals outside of singing and songwriting and was burned out of my potential vocation by my own distraction and by allowing myself to be used up by jerks.
When I was younger, I suffered the common delusions of both wanting it all and thinking I could have it. My truest desire as a young person was to become a famous singer-songwriter. When I finished music college, I thought that dream life would fall into my lap. Meanwhile, I worked as a music teacher in several music lesson stores while performing small venues on the weekends, hoping to be discovered. I was easily and hopelessly distracted by various shiny carrots dangled in my general direction. I contemplated going back to school for a more secure job teaching in the schools. I tried to learn about real estate. I started writing novels. I dabbled in everything but I was best at spreading myself too thin.
By far, one of my worst mistakes was getting involved with my local teacher’s association. Flattered because I was sought as an expert, I became involved as a judge in my chapter’s music tests for children ages K-12. Judge duties grew into an appointment as administrator of an exam that saw hundreds of pressure cooker music students flowing through facilities which it was my job to procure, with teachers it was my job to recruit and organize as volunteers, with tests it was my job to get printed. This extremely demanding, often 40 hour a week job (on top of my make-a-living job) was 100 percent uncompensated. To make matters worse, there were a few bad apple teachers who were used to gaming the system. Though the agreement was that by entering students, you would be donating a set amount of hours per student in volunteer time, the richest and most entitled teachers acted exactly as you would expect. They would enter two dozen or so students and then conveniently disappear on luxury vacations when it came time to volunteer for test duties. One chronic vacationer had the gall to call me and leave an angry tirade about how awful I was to expect her to honor the agreement and keep her students out of the test as she would not be there to perform any duties. How dare I spoil her jet plane vacation with her rich husband! I wasted years of my young life on these people... I had my fill. I abdicated the administrative position and quit the organization permanently. By the time I ended my stint as test administrator, I had lost the motivation and desire to perform my own music in public as a career. Perhaps it was a mercy killing: my music never appealed to an audience larger than a few souls scattered across the globe anyway. Either way, I am glad things went the way they did, but if my goal was to become a singer-songwriter, I did a lousy job of achieving that goal. I attuned myself to goals outside of singing and songwriting and was burned out of my potential vocation by my own distraction and by allowing myself to be used up by jerks.
Hypocrisy!
Back to gods: they don’t seem pleased with us humans when we pretend to be attuned to a noble cause and then proceed to show ourselves as the opposite of the ideals we preach. If mates of many years become a great deal like each other (regardless of passion or its absence) and if young music teachers become seasoned professional music teachers from spending years in the field, it follows that a self-proclaimed activist would become virtuous by the virtue of dedicating her time to activism. But what if there is no virtue in the activism? When vegans who proclaim all animals deserve mercy and then turn around with a merciless attitude towards other humans, who are only animals after all, the only force being sympathized with is arrogance. When the racial equality advocate tosses a pipe bomb into the local dollar store as her fellow advocates burn, loot, and vandalize the rest of the neighborhood, she is clearly not acting in the interests of the non-white people she claims to be championing. Non-white people were the ones shopping at Dollar General... Doing absolutely nothing is vastly preferable to acting as a hypocrite and then preening like a do-gooder. When the overbearing religious zealot tires the ears of anyone within shouting distance with his threats that you must either trust in Jesus or burn in hell, he is a great deal more like the devils in hell than he is like Jesus. Practice what you preach is the lesson. To become sympathetic to virtue, acting genuinely virtuous at every opportunity, even when these opportunities come with guaranteed pain, is the bottom line.
Back to gods: they don’t seem pleased with us humans when we pretend to be attuned to a noble cause and then proceed to show ourselves as the opposite of the ideals we preach. If mates of many years become a great deal like each other (regardless of passion or its absence) and if young music teachers become seasoned professional music teachers from spending years in the field, it follows that a self-proclaimed activist would become virtuous by the virtue of dedicating her time to activism. But what if there is no virtue in the activism? When vegans who proclaim all animals deserve mercy and then turn around with a merciless attitude towards other humans, who are only animals after all, the only force being sympathized with is arrogance. When the racial equality advocate tosses a pipe bomb into the local dollar store as her fellow advocates burn, loot, and vandalize the rest of the neighborhood, she is clearly not acting in the interests of the non-white people she claims to be championing. Non-white people were the ones shopping at Dollar General... Doing absolutely nothing is vastly preferable to acting as a hypocrite and then preening like a do-gooder. When the overbearing religious zealot tires the ears of anyone within shouting distance with his threats that you must either trust in Jesus or burn in hell, he is a great deal more like the devils in hell than he is like Jesus. Practice what you preach is the lesson. To become sympathetic to virtue, acting genuinely virtuous at every opportunity, even when these opportunities come with guaranteed pain, is the bottom line.
To this day, I have a large collection of stuff I don’t use. For instance, I have all the supplies with which to make soap, but I’ve never gotten around to making soap. The supplies are about 15 years old. I have a box of old silverware that I used to use when I hosted potlucks. It has been sitting around for about five years.
Most of us have extra stuff, from food we’ll never eat in our cupboards and refrigerators to extreme cases of entire unused houses. Our stuff absolutely owns us. We become the extra pair of shoes that should have been thrown away years ago. We resemble our own motley collection of small flower pots. I am partially the flatware that sits unused in my office. Its potential usefulness to someone else and the privilege of owning it are part of my karma, that is to say, my causes and my effects. The "cause" of the silverware being accumulated is now done and its energy is inert. It sits unused in my office. It needs to move on, and whether it ends up being used for someone's meals or melted down for the steel, the sensible thing for me to do is to donate it.
What (Are You On About) Now, Kimberly Steele?
The exercise is to get rid of five items you no longer use. Certain rules apply: you have to let go of the item, no hiding it away or loaning it. It has got to go somewhere where it will be used or at least thrown out. The key to the exercise is to get rid of the item with sincere intention that it will not be replaced by something that will become equally useless. When you throw or give the item away, acknowledge it and thank it for how it helped you in your life. Send it away with your blessing.
For instance, by the end of this week, I will practice what I preach and get rid of five things.
1. I will get rid of a framed print I have had nearly 10 years -- I don't think it is lucky for me. I also have a tiny house without adequate wall space.
2. The second thing I will get rid of is the old cornmeal I have stored in my cabinet. It is years old and cornmeal does not tend to last that long.
3. The third thing I will get rid of is that goofy flatware. If I cannot sell it, I will give it away.
4. The fourth thing I will get rid of is some epoxy resin I bought to make a craft memorial for my cat Kiki when she died. When I bought it, clearly I temporarily forgot how badly I suck at crafts. I will get a proper memorial made (by someone else) and give the resin to someone who is good at crafts.
5. The fifth thing I will get rid of is my hand blender. I do not use it anywhere near enough to justify owning it, and if I ever find myself needing a hand blender, I will get another one from GoodWill.
What five things will you get rid of? How soon will you get rid of them?
Things in which I did invest
I send you away, may you be blessed
Go to a place where you’ll be found
Or circle the right way around
To freedom, rest, and rebirth
Adored by those who know your worth
As I align myself more perfectly
And strip away all that isn’t me
I send you away, may you be blessed
Go to a place where you’ll be found
Or circle the right way around
To freedom, rest, and rebirth
Adored by those who know your worth
As I align myself more perfectly
And strip away all that isn’t me
