There are often humoUrous or even auspicious moments as I move through a day … if the phone is not in my hands, if I pull myself out of thoughts of what I need to do next … if I stop to look and listen.
Thursday morning while walking to the office, I noticed two people trying the door of Neiman Marcus, not realizing the department store wouldn’t open to take their $ until 10AM. Then I heard the song playing on the outdoor speakers: Mushaboom. I laughed out loud.
Mushaboom is a small rural community in Nova Scotia (the songwriter, Feist, was born in Nova Scotia). That that particular song, with lyrics about an old dirt road and knee-deep snow, was playing in a pretentious place surrounded by high-end high-rise condos and stores including Gucci, Hermès, Jimmy Choo, and Louis Vuitton wasn’t a sign to me … it was just funny. It was a comic scene in the small-budget independent film of, most likely, the only Nova Scotian walking by at that moment.
Last weekend, after leaving a Dharma teaching event that should have magnified my feelings of compassion, I instead felt myself withdrawing. The crowd, the traffic, the people on the bus: I tried to be open to it all, but just ended up exhausted and thinking “RETREAT! RETREAT!” I felt like a lousy Buddhist.
My anti-social feelings don’t last long and I think I’m generally a balanced extroverted introvert. But I’m curious whether a slower pace in my Mushaboom-like-place will make me more social (to escape cabin fever) or more reclusive. The SLSR plan emphasizes making more time to engage with others, not creating a hermitage.
References:
- Feist (Official Site)
- SLSR: simpler living semi-retirement