Peter's Oikos (Economy)

What if you could take a sightseeing trip through your own past? Or what if your emotional landscape could turn into pixar animation and you could hop on the bus and take a tour. Perhaps for some this is available. I have trouble dropping down into my feelings and my memory is faulty for some reason. I can remember books and movies, but struggle with returning to my own personal experiences. Of course, there is no way to know what it's like to be in another person’s head .... so for all I know this is normal and people have higher articulation--agile in words and so penetrating the cloudy mists of time. But I are speaking well, amen? "I are a graduate." I can’t remember what movie had that joke. 

I certainly feel anxiety as we all do right now. Corporate and collective anxiety for what the future will be and how much it will cost. The COVID deaths in the US are now at seventy five thousand. 

I feel a lot of anger at the gutted leadership in our country. The revolving door in the current administration for so many cabinet and other White House positions have left us with the dregs (and politicos are not the shiniest tools in the first place).

I also feel gratitude. Or maybe lucky. I have a good job and a big house and a full one. My anxiety is toward our world rather than my own little oikos--the root of our word Economy that means household. Yesterday, my youngest--6 and ½, set up a little store to make some money. Evidently he had been up past eleven the night before thinking about it. He approached and said that he wanted to sell some of his stuff so he could buy “gems” in a phone game on his brothers ipod. What is about little kids and their creamy skin and flashing eyes, especially when hatching a scheme that makes them feel big--to make them so charming that they are almost magical?

“What do you plan to sell?” 

“BBs to our neighbor Max" 

(Max is first year in military school but now stuck at home and often shooting an airsoft gun in his back yard).

“Really? How many do you have?”

“Four.”

So funny. We finally decide that with the state of the world, having a public store wouldn’t work, but if he wanted to set up shop in the dining room he could sell to us. I bought a hand carved giraffe bowl. It had $3 on it, but I felt generous and gave him $5. Tara bought a dog guidebook the size of my palm for $2. My oldest bought a pencil and half used notebook for $1. Unsold items are two different potions … one is a small plastic container with water and beads in it. The other is a plastic bowl with rocks, beads and lego sharks all covered in water. There are two books. (He came in to tell me when he added these because he knows I like books “Dad, I added two books that you might like, they are legit!”) And last there are rocks covered in googlie eyes. It made for fun interruptions to my work day.