Out of touch, but in-tune

Other than my beloved Food and Home and the occasional Cape Town Child or Living and Loving, I don’t read many magazines anymore. Recently I looked at one of my mom’s House and Leisure Magazines. What beautiful things. From amazing homes to couches, tables, linen, chandeliers, interesting places to eat at and be seen. I saw a table I liked that was R34000! It was nothing special, just a wooden table. (In another magazine I saw a chandelier that cost a million rand. Even if I had that kind of money I could not justify that kind of indulgence. ) When I look at the society pages with all the ‘beautiful people’ with their designer clothes, boob jobs and plastic smiles, I feel so removed. Don’t get me wrong I am not a ‘reverse-snob’ and like a true Taurean I really love pretty things and socializing, and would happily attend a cocktail party or gallery opening if anyone ever cared to invite me, but it all just looked so put on and artificial. That just isn’t my life. It got me thinking about how I also feel so out of touch with the kind of prices everything costs nowadays. I can’t help but wonder, am I the norm or are they? Do people really pay R50000 for a couch? Now days I even recoil in horror at Woolworths’s prices and consider myself lucky to find anything worthwhile for under R100. Belonging to a dinner club keeps me fairly up to date on the restaurant scene, but if it weren’t for that I would really feel disconnected from things as we no longer even go to the Spur! I can’t help but feel left behind. I am no longer trendy. In fact my clothes are rather boring and out of date. My home is furnished simply even though I may desire a few stunning designer items here and there. Part of me cares, but to be honest most of me is rather relieved. Times have changed, pockets have changed and in the process so have my priorities. Yoga changed the way I viewed material things. I have been very blessed in life and have always had more than enough of what I both need and desire. I have and will always love nice things and unfortunately most of those nice things do come with an expensive price tag, but yoga and recently circumstance has made me understand on a deeper level how those things are not really important and can never fulfill me. People talk about happiness and wanting to be happy. Most people attempt to make themselves happy by buying material objects, attaining some measure of power, status or wealth, or by giving in to desire (For more on this fascinating topic, read the incredible Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning). In time they learn that these pleasures are just trappings of a shallow society and like all things in a consumer-driven society, are short lived. What follows tends to be an existential crisis as everything they believed is proven to be a lie. The truth is that happiness is very simple and does not involve a R50000 couch, no matter how pretty it may be. Simple and yet elusive, as it lies deep within us all. Unless we are in touch with who we truly are, it will continue to elude us.

So I feel a bit out of synch with life, the trends, the fashion, the buzz. So, I am starting to feel my age, starting to recognize how my attitude and priorities have changed. I neither envy nor pity the people in the photos or those who are able to live the high life. I am just fascinated that I can no longer relate to any of it. What matters to me now are not what clothes I may wear or what car my friend’s drive, what job my husband has or where I ate my last meal. What matters to me now is honesty, down-to-earth truth and deep conversations with like-minded friends, love that is not hidden but boldly expressed, connecting with nature and learning how to be more in tune with the planet, precious time with family, creative expression, quiet time, wholesome food and the pure joy expressed on the faces of my children as they experience the wonder of life each day. As for my own happiness, it flows forth from all of that, and of course like all of us, remains a work in progress.

Tagged as: beautiful, Books, happiness, magazines, yoga