Basmati Rice.

You are eating a frozen dinner, Pakistan— tikka masala chicken, with basmati rice. You heat it up in a white and blue bowl you bought from Pottery Barn, a decent size, meant for cereal (back when you used to eat it). You add spinach and broccoli to offset the carbs — nuke it — then eat at your desk while working, surfing, hand mindlessly shoving fork full into your mouth.

Hot, kind of spicy. Tasty enough for a frozen meal.

Until you stop. And stare down. What are you doing? What is this? A bowl. Made of what and how? Ceramic and I don’t know. Where? In Thailand, at least the bottom of the bowl tells you so. It contains, rice… from where? Did it come from a paddy? (That would be weird.) How did it get to you, the broccoli, the spinach, the sauce, what is it made of, by what people, what machines? The chicken, where was it, whose farm, how old, did it know anything? (The chicken not the farm). How did it all get put together, who made the packaging and then delivered it to Trader Joes? Was it on one of those trains you see along the 10 freeway? And now the Ralph Lauren fork in your hand (a wedding gift, at least you remember that) manufactured where, made of what elements, is delivering this mosaic of foods into your mouth. As you look down. Then at your desk. The paper, the computers, the reading glasses, the pen. The composite particle board. Made of what, by whom, from where?

How is it we only ever see the result?

The process of creation so illusive, even invisible. Did it even happen? Shouldn’t everything have an origin story at our disposal? (We all love those.) So who came up with the Mont Blanc pen that gave it such value that my parents saw fit to give it to me on my graduation. So I make certain it never leaves my desk, never venturing into my purse for fear of loss (it has too much meaning now I fear). The candle, the crystal, the magazines I touch, the clothes I wear, I am a tapestry of this earth. Yet, I so easily disregard this earthly cornucopia for the next thing. What next article and thought to process? What protein bar to aimlessly chew and then toss its printed colorful wrapper that came from who knows where. Where did I come from? What have I put out there that people consume but never assume to think of. That I am anything but what I am right now. To be used. To be cast. Away. Like an actor trapped in a net. That’s never a good sign.

I can imagine a hundred, two hundred, five hundred years ago, a nano second on the universe’s clock, that everything I had around me I had found. I had made, I had fought for. It had history inherent in it. Imprinted on it. This is the bowl that I carved that will allow me to eat my food with greater ease. That will allow me to stir up the various foods that I have caught or grown or traded for. I will stare into this bowl as I eat. Marvel at its shape and function. I will notice the four different foods in my bowl that I am eating and identify each of them with a name, not just the collective ‘meal’. The idea of goods from another place, made by invisible people delivered to your door would have seemed like a fairytale. Would they disappear as easily as they appeared?

Will we?

If we continue to consume and acquire as opposed to identify and value, will we not disappear? As possessions becomes lumped in with each other, the more and more we acquire the less we notice, and the less each piece resonates. It gets lost in the vibrating monotonous hum. It keeps filling up the room until there is no room left, for us. Stop. Look at the picture frame. Imagine who made it. Look at the picture, remember the moment. How was it captured how was it printed? The magazines. The articles within them. Who had the idea, did the research, approved the copy, called in the sources? A mini army delivered that piece to you. And now it is squished up against the side of a bookshelf trying to breath. Give breath to what you have. Give attention to each thing you use, to each thing you consume. Pay attention.

And then perhaps the little things will finally seem little. And the big things, those things that aren’t new Tesla or houses or promotions, but family and love and conservation and health of you and of the planet can be recognized.

There is a small child in your house. She has ragged clothes on, made of burlap, speaks only the tongue of her Anglo Saxon brood circa 1752. She stares around your house like it is God’s Heaven. Her eyes brighten at the smooth tight walls, the warm splinter less floor. The white soft sleeping place, the long covered padded bench with a back that sits in front of a shiny flat slab that holds pictures and real life and voices. A box the size of a room that is like winter but holds more food that she has ever seen. See your life and all that you have through her eyes. And realize that she probably knows happiness as you do. Feels the same amount of joy in seeing her mother as your child does you. The same contentment after a good meal. But she knows far more pain than you do, and of the world far less. Her world is but the village she arrived into. Nothing that touches her has touched a place far away. Except perhaps the air. See your world through her eyes.

Because unless we do, we will disappear as quickly as we appeared. Prime Delivery: Free shipping, free returns. It could be as if we never existed.

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