The following is one report of today’s activities on Planet Earth. We have a general idea of the location as New York City. This is a Fig Newton of the Imagination, and does not purport to be an official 23:59 report from the United States of America.
It is impossible to fail when we imagine the possibilities to solve every problem. Our results may fail every so often, but when we collaborate to improve our methods then we will eliminate failure and deliver best results.
Here is what was downloaded from the Collective Consciousness. We hope you enjoy this story. Here it goes.
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The banking worker stumbled through the elevator, terrified to touch anything in the empty building. He had no hand sanitizer, and had forgotten some important files that he didn’t know how to access on the Cloud. Entering the locked building to search for the physical files was a measure of last resort.
What was now on the Cloud was also in his brain, but his brain was totally in a fog. He hadn’t forgotten the information, but the file in his brain was corrupted by months of social isolation. His children were living overseas. The bride of his youth had left him after their fourth child was born thirty years ago. He never wanted more than two children, and he now saw how cruel he was when she returned his seed with two more children. He missed them all terribly now.
He had never regretted telling her to leave with all their children years ago until now. He had only mocked her for her charity, reminding her that she would never make more money than him. She never talked back when he threatened her life if she tried to fight him for money. In retrospect, her actions spoke louder than her words. She took their children and left him once and for all the moment he cursed her very life. Maybe women didn’t need money to live so much as men, because their arms opened wider. Maybe there was more to an economy besides money, like health, bartering, and goodwill. Maybe women didn’t care about money as much as men, because their hearts were fuller. Maybe women lived longer than men for these very reasons.
He felt more empty than he had when she walked away without molesting a red cent in their shared bank account many moons ago. He admired her on the Internet now, tone, radiant, and beautiful. She looked lovelier than when they first met at university almost fifty years ago. She reminded him of what his beautiful Mother tried to teach him years ago. Womankind’s economic genius cannot be measured in dollars and cents. He had never understood that until now, and no amount of money could bring his Mother or the bride of his youth back right now. What could bring her back? He searched his memory banks of what his beautiful Mother tried to teach him to find an answer. He felt so alone as he considered the beautiful electronic images of the bride of his youth. She operated a charity in Tampa, and her smile radiated warmth through the Internet. He had not yet mustered the courage to complete her contact form from her web site. So it was for the banking worker, since he was used to having women in the office do everything for him.
To be sure, he excelled with the probabilities necessary to make successful trades. He excelled with what he called high level relationships with very wealthy people. What he had forgotten was The Law. The Law of his ancestors, taught in his youth was that respecting each person as an individual is the only high level relationship. Anything less was injustice, and anything more was idolatry. Holding men with money in higher esteem than one’s own wife and children would always end in bankruptcy, eventually. It seemed America had forgotten that what was often financially profitable was spiritually and socially bankrupt. It seemed the Covid-19 pandemic was here to remind them of this fact.
Until now, he had thought of wining and dining billionaires as high level relationships. Now, he thought of his Secretary’s morning conversations as an equally high level relationship. He had never considered that until now. She always remembered everything about his life, and he had taken that for granted as President. Today he realized the woman who served him as Secretary was more important than his own powers as President. He had not been able think properly without her warmth and competent service since the shutdown. He could not even get a call back from the Secretary who worked for him since 1983. She was busy taking care of her daughter and twin grandsons, born a few weeks before the shut down. He hoped those young men learned more than he had in almost seventy years of life.
He attempted to focus his mind on the location of the files as the elevator ascended to the penthouse suite overlooking the Hudson Bay. He lost focus every time the image of his dead cat, whom he had just found this morning amidst the dead ferns on his balcony, peeked through the aperture in his imagination. He had been in such a fog that he had neglected to water the plants, or let the cat in since his domestic workers walked away in April. No amount of money could get even his landscape worker to stay. The landscape worker kept the cat fed and happy, and the luscious hanging baskets beautiful. Now it was all dead, just as he realized he felt dead. He imagined the poor cat, starving to death, locked out of his luxury penthouse, while he was too consumed with panic over market forces to attend to this animal’s needs. He was barely able to get take out, since no one answered the phone at the local bodega or pizzeria, and he didn’t know how to use these apps that seemed to have replaced his administrative and support personnel overnight.
The live cat had adopted him as he walked home from work one evening many years ago, darting out from the alley into the crepuscular rays of the sunset. She rubbed against his legs, weaving in and out of his limbs as he walked all the way home, feeling smug that the bride of his youth didn’t want any money. She only wanted the divorce to be done. He reflected on how good a companion that butterscotch tabby cat had been all those years since his family scattered to the four winds. He had never even given her a name. He just called her cat. Now, when he tried to focus his mind on the live cat’s purr and green eyes, all he could see were her slackened fur and decaying flesh, swarming with insects this desolate morning. He felt the bile come up in his throat as his mind’s eye replayed the image over and over, despite his best effort to concentrate on the task at hand.
Suddenly, the elevator stopped and its doors whooshed open. He stepped into the office, which was almost too clean. Sterile. Empty. Organized. Controlled. His office lacked the human chaos necessary to create new order, thus he esteemed the empty office as having no value. The constant interruptions that had irritated him and infuriated him over the years would be so welcome now. Like the bride of his youth’s womb he had thought to be a problem when he populated it with fruit years ago, so he now saw the room would be more valuable when it was once again populated with people working together. When the room was so empty, so barren, it was a tomb. He was suddenly terrified to be all alone here, without the hustle and bustle of people. He felt guilty for their absence, as he felt guilty for screaming at his wife for being pregnant years before. No bride of his youth. No children. No Secretary. No Janitor. No one. He shuddered to think at the mechanical relationships between money, mistresses, and mannequins he had bandied about over the years since his divorce. His memory of these hollow relationships made him feel more alone now.
Searching through his files, he felt the terror of food insecurity he had known as a young child growing up in Brooklyn. He realized he had not eaten today. Suddenly, his brain froze with the confused signals to find the financial files and a pack of Lance Peanuts, a Clif Bar, anything to stabilize his low blood sugar.
With a fluorescent whoosh like a comical Zorro, the Caregiver appeared in her shock pink medical scrubs, kinky red hair, and bright orange paisley face mask. She had been running up and down the stairs for exercise for the past few weeks. No one knew how to open the fire escape door except her, but she kept that secret to herself. It was fun to have the run of many buildings she could hack into all over America, and she did no harm. She enjoyed dusting and cleaning in this penthouse suite as overcompensation for her crime. It was her way of resting, taking ownership of the empty space, and enjoying the panoramic view of the Big Apple. She could never understand why people paid good money to join a gym when they could just run around. People who were thought to be poor and without a vehicle were rich in ideas about how to keep healthy.
The banking worker gasped in shock and terror. The Caregiver slung her knapsack off her shoulders and pulled out what he thought would be a gun. He welcomed the opportunity to be killed immediately. He realized he had been dead inside for a long time. No one cared about him, except for to ask him for money. Children, neighbors, everyone acted like being a billionaire exempted a human being from the pain of life.
Yet it did not. He remembered in tears the bride of his youth, who worked two jobs while she managed their entire family, who never complained when money was tight, and never grabbed money when it was loose. He prayed in that moment, as best he could recall from his Oma’s teachings, for her and all their progeny. He closed his eyes as he stood, threw his wallet on the desk before the Caregiver, and put up his hands in surrender. No one in New York City accepted cash these days anyway, so it didn’t much matter anymore if this woman took every last bill in his wallet.
He heard a thud, then opened his eyes. She was gone. In her stead, next to his wallet, was a brown bag lunch. That’s what she retrieved from her knapsack, not a gun. The Caregiver always lived by the principle to spend, save, and share. Invest yourself well in your own health and the health of nations.
With a long sigh of relief, the banking worker enjoyed the homemade peanut butter and banana sandwich, carrot sticks, and dried figs the brown bag offered. As his blood sugar steadied, he retrieved the financial files he needed, then turned to a more important matter.
He completed the contact form on the bride of his youth’s website. In that moment, he felt alive and invigorated, humbled and grateful for everything in his life. Fear had been replaced by power, love, and sound mind.
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This has been an unofficial 23:59 report from Planet Earth. Imagine the possibilities when we connect through compassion and mutual guarantee.
#planetearth #ourhome #unity #generosity #empathy
