Recap of a Discussion
Once a week we meet to discuss things of our hearts, to state questions not answers. Last time it was deep and it reflected some of the ideas I want to express here. Therefore I want to give here a recap. By the way this is our website: http://dankrusi.com/thefellowship/
The topic was as follows: Materialism, is this our new religion? As a discussion starter we stated that the problem of consuming is only hard to see in the case where it hurts others and are ignorant of it. Where either the consumer or the seller directly suffers under it, it is not hard to show why one shouldn't engage in such a trade. The problem is if we do wrong when we act as a consumer but do know know the full consequences if it. We read a quote of a ancient myth that Plato uses in The Republic: The Ring of Gyges. It's the idea of having a means to escape the consequences of our acts of injustice (Tolkien took up on this idea in the Lord of the Rings). The difficulty is now that we willingly choose to be ignorant of our acts of injustice, which is especially easy in materialism because the problems are outsourced in a global economy to places where we'll never hear what our Nike shoes do to the factory workers. To overcome this issue takes a lot of effort on our side to educate ourselves what effects our western life style has on the whole world. Then having that knowledge to feel actually responsible and act upon it is the hard part. There are two main spectra, one where we are responsible as an individual guided by our moral compass and one where we are responsible as a citizen in society, responsible for our laws to reflect our convictions. It starts with the first one resulting in a certain lifestyle, then it moves on to our social responsibility. Last night we primarily focused on the lifestyle. I think looking at this it becomes quickly evident that we long for practicalities. Examples we can follow. So we shared some of our ideas. Someone said its important to start with reflecting on actions we do. Thinking first. The someone said he wishes he could take more time to just be quiet and think, but that our fast paced industrial lives leave no room for that. Quickly we realized that we all regularly attempt to take more time to be alone and think but that it quickly fails due to other priorities that dominate such "none sense". If we have a ten minute slot before bed time we quickly fill it with a YouTube clip or something similar. I threw a realization into the pot I had a week ago or so, that we work long days with soul consuming jobs to earn lots of money with which we finance our expensive free time in which we try again to make up for our meaning less time at work. During our 20 minute lunch time we have to buy overpriced fast food wrapped in ridiculous amounts of plastic, just because we do not have the time to prepare real food. There are many more examples that quickly show bountiful evidence of a senseless lifestyle that we are often guilty of. Returning to the question, how we should live then, we felt the necessity to reflect more on what consequences our western lives have. It's easy to say we should just all live in the mountains but how do we act as citizens of the centers of civilization, namely the city.
Next time we'll discuss more what it means to acquire a reflective lifestyle and how we should relate to the issue of social justice. I'm looking forward to it.
Back to Field One: Switzerland
Exploring Istanbul was exciting, but after a little over a week of only rain I started thinking how my journey should continue. The days got shorter and the temperatures kept dropping so I was unsure how the pilgrimage should continue in the winter.
I heard that my girlfriend was in Switzerland and that my mom was planing to go to the mountains for a week or more and since I found a cheap flight ticket home I decided to just do a surprise visit. On the 18th of December I flew home. It was quite weired to fly home, all the distance that I made in four month just melted down to three hours. There was some melancholy because I had to say good bye already to this new life of being on the road. At the same time I was looking forward to meet Chrystal and to see my family.
As I arrived in Zürich late at night no one knew that I was coming. I took the train to Zürich main train station and then went to a friend and knocked on his door, he was quite surprised to see me but it was no problem to let me surf his couch for the night. Early in the morning I walked back to Erlenbach where my journey started. It was quite a special time I walked through the woods and slowly everything became familiar. I was a little nervous though how my family would react and most of all Chrystal. We had some great troubles in our relationship and didn't talk for over six weeks. My mom invited her to celebrate Christmas with my family even though I wouldn't be there. I approached the house as it was still early in the morning and just walk in. No one was around except my moms cleaning lady she was quite surprised too to see me but let me in. I snook up to the room where Chrystal was sleeping and you can imagine she was quiet surprised to see me. She hid under the blanket. Also my whole family was cheerful to have me back alive.
After two days in Zürich we went to the mountains of Flims to celebrate Christmas up there. I loved to spend time with Chrystal and get some things straight that we struggled with. It was hard for her that I went on this trip and I can understand, we had a long distance relationship for over three years and me hiking alone didn't make it much easier. After our time in the mountains she had to go back to university in Vancouver, we parted cheerfully knowing that more good things are to come. Since then I was mostly at home studying, following up some of the spiritual discoveries I've made along my way.
Many people ask if I will continue the pilgrimage but I don't know yet. I've learned to take the decisions day by day not looking ahead too far. I might go to Canada for a while until summer starts and then continue from Istanbul to Jerusalem, but honestly, I don't know. Currently I spend a lot of time studying, praying and meditating. Besides that I work a little as a software developer to refill my wallet.
More about what I'm learning here in the next post. The pilgrimage continues and it is less about making it to the real Jerusalem than to find the inner one.
The Paleo Festival
I'm currently working in Nyon, a town in the French speaking part of Switzerland. My last few days at work are super nice because I'm supporting Swisscom (network company) here at the Paleo festival. The location of my desk is especially nice: Here's Donavon Frankenreiter rocking the stage in front of my desk.
Here's a pic of My Desk.
