Just A Thought...and A Real One!

Have you ever noticed a puddle of water on the street?...


Its usually pretty nasty. You are not generally moved to go over there and take a sip from it. I think we have a primal understanding that water that is not flowing is bad water. You are much more likely to drink from a flowing stream than a puddle of water on the side of the road.


I sort of equate the idea of flowing water to being "alive" and living. When something is dead, it no longer moves and no longer serves a function in the cycle of the system. When something dies, it becomes debris that needs to be washed away so that it can become part of the cycle again.


Circulation of money works in this same principle noh? We want an economy where the money moves around and generates a healthy flow. Japan had been in trouble a few years ago because people would store a lot of money in savings and then never spend it. Its economy wasn't flowing.. its flow hindered by the hoarding of money into private stockpiles. thus the value of money really lies in rate of flow of its movement from one party to another. The money itself has no intrinsic value, however, the ability of money to facilitate transations and exchanges is why it is valuable to us.


So then i would conclude, your money is only as valuable as you manage and use it because simply having a lot of it doesn't do you a lot of good unless you are using it wisely. In the same way, I could apply this analogy to life and emotional patterns. if you do the same exact thing for your entire life, then it gets stale and boring. We may not notice this because of our greed to hoard more and more stuff narrows our vision. Maybe first i do business to make money to have a better lifestyle, but then out of greed I start to just make more money to make more money. Or maybe i could be someone who wants to be liked by others so I direct my life in a way that so that i surround myself with peole that say "yes" to me all the time. (FYI I'm not really talking about myself here! just making theoretical points about the power of greed in our lives).


However, those who live more rewarding lives are people who stay aware of the greater flow around them, and move with it. Even if we are so busy running around, do we stop to notice we are running around in a circle? We create the illusion for ourselves that we must be going somewhere because we are running so fast and we can feel the wind blowing on our faces. I then take a step back and give myself a reality check to see if in fact, i'm just running around in a circle.


In a way that's sort of like moving around but not really going anywhere. Not quite as bad as stagnant water, but its pretty much the same thing. Its time for me to stop treading water, and start swimming for real.