The heart of a matter—the heart of anything—is the truth of it. Everything else is just packaging.
Packaging is ok. There’s nothing inherently good or evil about it. It’s just packaging, though.
Sometimes the packaging communicates something about the heart, sometimes it obfuscates.
Imagine the difference in the way you feel when you get two gifts. One is a cheap trinket packaged exquisitely. The other is a beautiful string of pearls wrapped in a shoe box with newspaper.
I have a huge distrust of packaging. Maybe it stems from my first gag gift. It was at our family Christmas. I must have been 6 or 8. Everyone drew names that year. One gift under the tree was much larger than the rest. Turns out it was from my cousin Cathi, my elder by two years, to me. Everyone was excited when it came my turn. I opened the box. Another box. Wrapped like the first. I opened that box. Another box. Also wrapped. This went on for about 5 or 6 iterations. Finally, I got to a very small box, wrapped with Christmas paper and ribbon. I shook it. Everyone looked on with anticipation. I opened it. It was a cheap, used tube of red lipstick. Everyone laughed. Ha ha ha ha! I was confused. “It’s a gag gift” someone said. “What’s a gag gift?” I completely didn’t understand.
I do now.
Since then I’ve been gagged many times. But never again with boxes and ribbons.
And I’ve found lots of treasures in stinky shoe boxes wrapped in yesterday’s news.
It’s the heart that matters.
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3 comments:
I swear, we must be on the same channel. I just wrote about this today, also. I was thinking in terms of penitence. I don't think you can repent actions. I think you can really only repent your heart. You see, actions have a life. They are dominoes that flick other dominoes that create your whole reality. To regret a single action is to say you regret your entire reality and that would just be absurd because it couldn't be true. So really, I think the only repentable thing is the heart with which you acted. Does that make sense to you?
Makes perfect sense.
We've been watching Heroes lately, and one of our favorites is Hiro Nakamura, who bends time and space with his mind. When you think about the space-time continuum and history and the links in the chains of cause and effect, there are just too many things going on there to spend your life second guessing. Or repenting of the way things are. Who you are and what you become is precious. Everything else is the proverbial stuff that happens.
It is the heart that matters.
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