It’s been a truly liberating experience for me to eat a strawberry in the same place that it was born, only seconds after it was plucked. The fruit has no bar code, no USFDA information; it is not shrink-wrapped with thousands of others. No, it is a very specific strawberry from a very specific plant. Yes, it may look and taste like thousands of others, but it has a history and a location unlike all the rest. For me, this berry is a distinct piece of fruit. I have watched her for days, waiting till she’s perfectly ripe, trying to get to her before the caterpillars do. And when I pick the strawberry up from her earthy beginnings, it feels like a holy moment: where earth, wind, sun, and water have come together to give me a piece of themselves. The tiny, misshapen berry becomes a celebration of life and new beginnings.
Yes, the paycheck and the purchase are necessities but the mere acquisition of wealth and product cannot be our purpose here on the planet. There has to be a higher way. We have been fooled if we see the worth of a forest only in terms of the lumber it can offer us. We are mistaken if we view the worth of the human soul in terms of the skills that she can bring to the corporation. The power we harvest from the sun’s solar energy will never match the worth of its beauty. And yet, we are constantly confusing monetary value with worth.
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