After exploring the topic on family and community yesterday I started to get jealous of my own ideas. SO I went to a potluck with my brother and it was a delight. There were about 15 of us all running around like chickens with our heads cut off chopping, sauteeing, backing, washing dishes, and finally eating.
Menu:(all hand picked recipes by my brother from Lydia's Italy website, I just love her cooking show!)
Rainbow chard, bread, and potato soup
whole wheat spaghetti with a apple tomato sauce
vegetable stuffed crimini mushrooms
chocolate cake
red wine
coffee
what a wonderful night full of dancing, talking, smoking, eating, loud and spirited sing along, and of course pictionary, which I thought I was good at but apparently I am a better guesser.
Anywho a night like that makes you never want to be alone! Although I do enjoy my uninterrupted studio time quite a bit.
I am working on a few paintings write now, that are all going well. One is of a musk ox face with a sort of psychedelic background, and the two others are both of a praying mantis.
All in all I have to say art, reading, eating, hanging with friends does a happy person make!
peace out yo!
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Devolution of Family
I was thinking as I was sitting on the toilet, the best place for ideas. Why do people in their 20's/30's feel so lost, unprescribed, or unimpassioned. Why is it that I have so many friends who work their asses off, up to sixty hours a week, are unhappy, and trying to find something meaningful to do with their lives. Only to come to some kind of resolution that they need to change things and find out that they can't make money if they did what they truly wanted to.
I believe that it has to do with the lack of a family unit. We are told to make money that will allow us to lead a comfortable life, give us security, and make it so we can raise a family on our own. The only problem with making money our main goal in life is that it often results in us moving away from family. Why? well we first get trained to do something that we are interested in. This training's purpose is to show us how to do what we like or what we are talented at and make money off of it. So then, we need to find a job doing this thing we've been trained for and if we haven't left home for the training we will probably leave home for a job. To end up in some major metropolitan center, only to get caught up in rent money, bills, food expenses, social activity expenses to take our mind off of work, traveling expenses to see family, and money to go towards whatever habit you've picked up to cope with life in general i.e. smoking, drinking, yoga, racket ball, or whatever.
This I believe is the main reason why we are separated from our family and our community. (Though many of us who grew up in suburban upper to middle class america never really experienced a real sense of community to begin with.)
Why is moving away from home sometimes a bad thing?
1. financial support
a. by providing housing
b. work in the family business
c. sharing meals together
d. babysitting each others kids
2. emotional support
a. it is important to feel loved
1. by friends
2. brothers and sisters
3. neighbors
(this support can't just come from your boyfriend or girlfriend or worse just your co-workers it is to much pressure!)
My point is that family or community can provide a much healthier environment for people to live in. How many of you have been to a potluck, that warmed up the house or apt. on a winter day, where people stayed so long that everyone got hungry again, where the food was so bountiful the hostess could eat for the rest of the week, and where afterwards you felt full and warm inside but not just because of the food. It was because of the sharing, the conversation, and the jovial love that spread through that event.
Maybe I am focusing to much on a singular event. The point is everything and I mean everything! would be so different if we cared for each other, if we did what we loved even without the thought of financial gain, if we weren't so self-centered. ;(
SO lets do it!! Lets cultivate community, family(call your mom or dad right now and tell them you love them or better yet if you can go, give them a hug!), life!
Sorry I got preachy there but really it's important to create a healthy culture, I believe that our future as humans rides on it ;)
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