Tag: coins

Enough Already

+ Kelly Corrigan is an author and a podcaster for PBS. She sends emails of her overall takeaways from her latest podcasts. This week she had a conversation with a best selling author, ultramarathoner, podcaster, former addict, Stanford educated swimmer Rich Roll. (My eldest son is a big fan of Rich Roll. They are both vegans.) I haven’t heard this interview yet, but I loved Kelly’s number one takeaway from her conversation with him. Rich Roll said this: “Change is only grand in retrospect. Day by day, it’s small choices and tiny adjustments. Believe in the incremental.” I love this. It’s the truth. The only way I have made any lasting changes in my life is when I took my goal day-by-day. Today, I will limit my sugar. Today, I will go to bed by 9:30. Today, I will write a blog post (I have been blogging almost daily since 2018 and it has changed my life. But I honestly had no idea what exactly I was setting out to do, when I started it . . . .)

+ I got a lesson/reminder from the Universe taught to me yesterday in the most interesting of ways. I am currently taking a Zen meditation/Asian art class by a wonderful Japanese woman, who is passionate about teaching. I didn’t have any supplies, so I started loading up on paints, and brushes, and hanko stamps (those red marks which you often see in the corner of Asian artwork). I got most of my things from Oriental Art Supply in California and a few things from Amazon, but I also started perusing eBay for “extras.” One extra that I ended up purchasing had nothing to do with painting. Here is the description of it:

“This decorative Japanese coin features a striking combination of green and black with beautiful lettering. It is a unique piece that will add flair to any collection.”

Now I’ve mentioned before that I have piggy banks full of lucky pennies, more than one lucky three legged toads, and an adorable lucky money tree that my youngest son gave to me. So, yes! I figured that a giant green Japanese coin was a must-have for my lucky money collection. As the seller said, it would add “flair” to my collection. And I will never say no to luck and flair. My purchase arrived yesterday. Here it is:

It came with a description paper full of Japanese lettering, so my original plan was to ask my art teacher to translate it, but I’m not a patient person, so I went to Google Translate to see what I could figure out. Nothing fruitful came to any understanding for me, from trying to translate each of the symbols on the “coin” (my husband insisted it was really a bottle opener), but the translation of the paper mentioned “the most famous, tsukubai, Ryoan-ji.” During my research, I found out that a tsukubai is a small, stone, water basin usually found in temples and tea houses in Japan, to cleanse your hands and your mouth before entering these sacred spaces. Apparently, my “coin” is a representation of the top of the tsukubai, at the entrance of a famous zen temple in Kyoto, Japan called the Ryoanji Temple. The grounds of this temple house a mysterious rock garden that is supposedly so naturally peaceful, scientists have done studies to figure out if certain placements of rock and terrain, hold the “secret” to peace. Anyway, below you will find a picture of the actual tsukubai and a translation of what the face of the tsukubai is really conveying (credit: muzu-chan.net)

“it is that famous because of its Zen inscription: taken separately, the four kanji are meaningless, but if they are read including the middle square hole (口), they become 吾 唯 足 知 – “ware tada taru shiru”. A literal translation would be “I only know enough”, but a more accurate translation would be “I learn only to be satisfied”. The real meaning of the phrase is that what you have is all you need: if you learn to be satisfied with the things as they are, then you are spiritually rich, while if you’re not contented then you are spiritually poor (even if you’re materially wealthy)…”

In short, the secret of true wealth is not collecting coins (“lucky ones” or real ones), but with feeling content and satisfied right in every single moment of your life. “What you have is all you need.” Apparently my beautiful green coin/bottle opener is really a cool, ancient mystical reminder of what we all know from the depths of our souls, but in our everyday stresses, we often forget it: “You are enough.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Cracked Ring

Some of the most interesting, heart wrenching, thought provoking conversations I have had in my life have occurred with clerks who are helping me with my purchases. I am one of those people who strangers have a tendency to tell me their stories, and depending on the day, I consider this trait of mine to be a blessing or a curse. But at the very least, it is compelling to hear these random stories. This “gift” has given me an overall perspective of how rich and deep and interesting each individual life is, in this world. It’s made me less assuming about people and experiences in general.

My eldest son and his girlfriend are coming down to Florida this week, and so I wanted to buy them little “great to see you” gifts. There is a little shop by me that has various booths where people sell their wares – some homemade, some curated, some full of junk, some full of beautiful, rare things. Anyway, my son’s girlfriend collects gnomes and I knew that this one booth sells adorable handmade “lucky gnomes” that have lucky pennies cemented on the bottom of them. (Yes, I do have more than one of them for myself.) So, I picked out a gnome and then I started stressing about what to get for my son. (My son and his girlfriend are flying, so small things are in order, for it to be easy to be brought back up north.) My eldest son is a history buff and has always been interested in the World Wars, so in a booth full of antiques I found a set of WWII quarters that I knew that he would like and so I brought the trinkets up to the counter to pay for them.

The woman who was running the register was an older, animated, very talkative woman who had a deep Louisiana drawl. Earlier she had found me in the store and cornered me with drawn out descriptions of various gnome products that she would be selling in her booth in the store, coming this fall. Honestly, as I was getting ready to pay for my items, I was tired, I was cranky, and I wasn’t in the mood for random conversation. At that moment, I did everything that I could to shut off the “gift” of hearing stranger’s stories, short of being utterly rude. Nonetheless, the shop lady started asking me about the WWII quarters and I told her that they were for my history enthusiast son.

“My father was a soldier in WWII,” she said.

“Oh, wow. Both of my grandfathers served in the war, too,” I said.

“Did they come back?”

“Yes, thankfully.” I stalled a little, thinking to myself that this was sort of a strange question. Then suddenly, I understood where this was headed.

“Did your father come back?”

“No,” she said, more quiet and somber than she had been the entire time in which we were in each other’s company. “He was 29 when he went over, and he was 30 when he died.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”

She didn’t seem to hear me. She kept with her story. “My mother was gardening one day and she looked down and she noticed that her wedding ring had cracked in half. For some reason, she wrote this happening on the calendar. Weeks later, she received a letter in the mail, that my father had died on that very day that her ring had cracked.” And then the clerk, forced a big, gracious, old Southern lady smile on her face and told me to come back real soon. And in that moment, I was grateful in my heart that my “gift” of attracting other people’s stories, gave to me another story that I won’t soon forget.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.