In the marketplace of life, who determines the value? Is it the buyer or the seller? Often we see something, ask for the price and determine then if we are willing to trade for it. I often love to go to open markets, more to watch the people than actually to acquire things. You see the wave of human drama as sellers, anxious to unload what is perishable to a public that is trying to fulfill their family's needs. Samples of produce are often cut open to display its fresh quality openly, yet when a seller doesn't have such a display, buyers often walk by the stand suspecting something may be a little off.
As I walked through an area in Zhongshan, I viewed the story board of safety tips for the community. Step by step cautions relating to a multitude of topics. The social training that all societies employ in differing venues. How often it seems we rely on others to tell us how we should behave.
Shouldn't it be as simple as this sign above?
After all, we are human and at one time or another we hang our laundry outside to dry.
2 comments:
Great post. This made me think about so many things. How do we value other people? When we're considering befriending someone we don't know, how do we evaluate as we get to know them? What do we want them to demonstrate before we feel safe to trust? It should all come down to open hands and open hearts. We are all human, carrying the same human condition as everyone else. I keep seeing this theme come up, that we're wasting time discerning differences and hiding things that are shared by everyone. What I think we're starting to do in little steps (like blogging about this) is to accept our humanness, accept our animal bodies and our divine spirits as parts of the same whole, and realizing that it and we are all one.
Why evaluate another? This is what I think about on the streets of China, I have come to this place to not fear another soul because our paths may never cross again. I would miss the opportunity through fear. The fear of being hurt. What we lose is all of the smiles and laughter along the way by thinking about all that can go wrong instead of focusing on what can go right. We miss the chance of peace. If you walk out the door with that mindset, it's really hard to have a bad day.
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