Doors and stores...

Resolve to be thyself: and know, that he who finds himself, loses his misery.

- Matthew Arnold

I was sitting in the coffee shop waiting for Bill. We meet early Wednesday mornings to chat about…well, whatever is on the burner for the week. We don’t talk much about the hot button items of the day – you know, the politics, the movies, the sex, the sports…it is mostly just two older fellas who have found some mutual pathways - exploring the resonance…the small personal and spiritual stuff. The sort of things friends do…nothing special…you know what I mean…like a pair of old tennis shoes –quietly comfortable.

We typically meet pretty early, but occasionally get our schedules mixed up. We are usually good about communicating, but this was one of those mornings when we had not checked in the day before, and he was a no show – I’ve missed our meetings a time or two as well.

A wandering mind…
You know how it is when you have a few minutes, waiting to get something started…there really isn’t time to work on anything in particular, or to get into a focused train of thought…you are just waiting. While sitting there, a song from the 1960s slipped out of my memory banks and drifted across my consciousness… “It never rains in Southern California.” The title is ironic because the chorus actually goes:

“…It never rains in California – But girl don't they warn ya – It pours, man it pours…”

Like the lyrics of that iconic Albert Hammond song from a bygone era, it was raining this particular morning and raining hard!

Wants and needs…
The music playing in the coffee shop was Vivaldi – surely different from the 60s rock song in my head. I was looking out the window in front of me, with the unfocused gaze of a camera lens poorly adjusted. Just to the front was a small, open-air walkway running between the coffee place and some shops across the way. A small, flower-decorated pond with a fountain, sat in the middle of the path where shoppers could easily move from store to store lining the walkway. These kinds of little stores are common in the Mediterranean climate Southern California is so famous for, because, in fact rain really doesn’t very often come.

Since it was early, it would be several hours before these stores opened. As I looked through the pouring rain, across the open walkway, I wondered, “If all the doors, of all the stores were open, AND you could take whatever you wanted, what would you take?” How much would you take? When would it be enough?

I thought about that for a few moments, working through my list if items. While this exercise was taking place, a second thought popped into my mind with a bit of a twist.

“If all the doors, of all the stores were open, AND you could take whatever you needed, what would you take?” How much of what you needed would you take? When would it be enough?

Wants vs. Needs…an old dilemma in the story of human nature. What is the measure by, or context through which one makes the decision?

Some things to ponder…
It’s all really relatively, isn’t? For example, if you live in a first world country, have a decent job and gotten used to a particular lifestyle, you might take certain things based on the questions above – the potential for gathering practically limitless.

If you were, as is half the world’s population, living on less than $2.00US per day, with little more than your clothing, some shelter and hard won food for the day, you might have a totally different ‘want to need’ ratio in your life…and you probably would not be reading this.

There is something about ‘…not having…’ with barriers ‘…to getting…’, that makes ‘…wanting to have…’ take center stage in our minds. This sometimes leads us to gather things we may have little use for….keeping them on hand, you now…just in case. It is surprising how much time we spend occupying our minds with the wanting and the getting. Much of this is tied to how we value ourselves, or more importantly how we think others value us. In fact, this is nothing more than background noise in our lives.

It’s all a metaphor
Feeling we want and need things, is really a reflection of a much deeper want and a more thoughtful need. Thinking about these questions led me to a series of thoughts regarding spiritual pathways and spiritual stores, and the things we want and need out of life. Not clothing or jewelry or computer or the latest phone technology, but rather wisdom or faith or understanding or joy or happiness – not just the pursuit of happiness…things for which we have the most primal of desires. The things we get at the literal store satisfy us for the briefest of time. The things we get from the spiritual stores of life are more difficult to attain, but infinitely more satisfying.

Is there a point here?
The conversation in life is not about the big things, the mountains yet to climb, the drive to have things that proclaim we are something or somebody. This is a conversation that feels comfortable like an old pair of tennis shoes. It is about finding an internal resonance, a quiet dialogue between friends. At this time in life, there is a realization that my best friend should be me – the creature that lives inside the body I inhabit, the friend who carries the name Ted. As I have been a little longer in my journey, THIS is what I WANT…more importantly THIS is what I NEED. My wants and my needs becoming the same thing…and isn’t this the way it should be?

- ted