The Art of Zen Living

I think one of the skills that we’ve pushed out of western society is patience. At first, I thought what we’d lost was “delayed gratification”, but upon reflection, the skill that’s missing is required for, but more basic than, simply delaying gratification.

The only time we seem to be in the now is when we’re insisting on getting some material thing now. E-Z Terms, Instant Credit, no payments until next year - whatever the marketing buzz is it’s about parting us from our money, often before we’ve even earned it! We’ve traded in our citizenship in the community to be consumers in the capitalism. Our choices are no longer between “right” and “wrong” or “good” and “bad” - our choice is between “red” and “blue”. So how do we change that?

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I learned something this week.

I’m not good at writing about myself.  I was surprised to learn that, since I can talk about myself until even *I* am tired of hearing about me.

I have finally posted the “My Story” page.  Sometime in the next week, I’ll post a page that covers the story behind this blog, how it came about, and why I chose the title.

For the past week or so, I’ve been watching my friend’s kitten for her. I’ve been working with this little kitten, teaching her some different things, my cats have been teaching her different things, and while she’s very stubborn, she’s picking some things up. The kitten’s name is Starr, and she’s half Sphinx (hairless) and half domestic short hair. This is the first in a series of posts about the lessons I’m learning from my cats.

What I didn’t expect was to learn so much from this kitten. Today, I’m just going to talk a little about Starr’s concept of things and ownership. Or, more precisely, her total lack of this concept. My cats understand very little about ownership, but even as adult cats, they have some idea of the concept - they’re territorial. At first, the kitten was allowed into the common areas, kitchen, living room and bathroom, but the lanai was off limits with the exception of using the litter box. Same with the bedroom. Those areas “belonged” to my cats. It didn’t take long for them to decide that Starr wasn’t much of a threat, and allow her access to the entire kingdom (in as much as a 1 bedroom apartment can be considered a “kingdom”).

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