From a day out in Oakland, Friday. Writing from a public library.
Nasturtiums!
It’s the warmest day I’ve been out in awhile, and my hands feel sticky and my hair is plastered to the back of my neck and my feet feel muffled and tender inside my running shoes. My backpack drags on my shoulders. But I am out, having a holiday.
I’m grateful for this big table, this good light, the silent spaciousness of this northwestern corner of the library. There are windows on two sides, with climbing vines shading them from the outside, and my chair and table glow warm color, slightly reddish, with the straight grain of the wood preserved.
Earlier this week I finished Ben Okri’s novel The Famished Road, about a family eking by in an African ghetto, and the five hundred pages of their life made me feel rich in my meagerest existence. This afternoon I am hot and tired, but I walk with a hat and shoes and a bottle of water. At any moment I can stop for pad see ew or lemonade or to wash my hands; I can get on a bus if I want to, or even a taxi. I walk knowing that I return afterwards to running water and privacy and electric light to read a book by. And I walk by choice, not having to carry any wares or heavy loads, not having to earn anything while I am out.
For most of the world’s people even an “uncomfortable” day like this would seem unimaginably luxurious. Not only may I eat when I am hungry, drink when I am thirsty, and sleep when I tire, but I can come in out of the sun or the rain or the crowds. I am surrounded by pleasures both everyday and extraordinary: nasturtiums growing up a tree, scented hand lotion, fine food and clothing and books. I have — without having earned it, fought for it, or lived without it — everything.
Ahh.
May you feel replete with blessings, and spread them throughout the world in all ways that you can.
satsumabug.com | Lisa Hsia 
Yes, Lisa! May we all.
I hug you. 🙂
❤
<3! 🙂
Excellent and humbling, and something I wish more people were aware of. I miss running water, bathing whenever I want to, a flushing toilet. I miss having a nice house, a table for company to sit around. And then I read this and realize, the things I miss are connected to pride. I have ten acres bordered by national forest. I have kerosene lanterns. I, too, can eat when hungry, and come out of the weather. I have family, I can provide for my son, and I forget that my company comes to see me, (and bears) and not to sit around a table like they could do anywhere else. Pride makes us value things that are really not valuable, and makes us overlook those things that are. Thank you for the reminder.
“Pride makes us value things that are really not valuable, and makes us overlook those things that are.” Yes. I try to remember this often, in as many ways as possible. We are so bombarded with ideas of what’s necessary — ideas that are really extremely new as far as humanity goes, and foreign even in many present-day cultures — that it’s easy to forget just what the true good things are.
So very true. Thanks for the reminder to be grateful of the abundance all around me–even when I’m having a “crappy” day, I have so much to be thankful for!
Yeah, our “crappy” is other people’s “luxurious beyond wildest imaginings,” which is all kinds of depressing and scary and humbling. We can’t chastise ourselves too much for forgetting that; it’s a coping mechanism and there are so many industries built on helping us forget (and feel even worse about ourselves)… but we can try to remember it as frequently as possible!