Outside, a gentle blanket of snow is covering NYC, myself, I am now back home in Brooklyn after spending a wonderfully warm week on the West Coast, and all I can think about is a toasty wood fire that I wish I had a brick chimney to light it up in.
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Like the first European settlers who in order to keep warm lived in a one room home, everyone huddled together, centered around a fireplace, often with their livestock at their side; I too live in a one room apartment where often I imagine my electric heater to be but a primitive flickering flame. Although I do not need to cook or bake with my source as would they, I find myself wondering whether our advancements are really worth it; for how lonely one can feel in the generosity of their own private room, for how lackluster is the generous flow of a soot free flame, for how bland are those un-perishable and instantly nuked meals, for how cold are the barren walls of so many homes, for how dependent we have become on the ability of others to help keep us safe, for how few homes can now truly be called a home.
I know the general perception is that people are now warmer and safer, yet please remember that many more of the worlds people do no have any of these privileges, and yet I believe that they survive rather more intuitively by embracing the warmth of their one-room hearts.
My point: Don’t take for granted the safety, warmth, and security we often may assume are easy to come by. Don’t assume that you are better off or that others are lacking; because in the end, everyone has to help each-other to advance in a way that can truly be beneficial to us all.
Photo: Naftali Stern for theBohmerian.com
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