Refuge

On rainy days like these, I like to sit, cross-legged, on the balcony of my apartment and watch the rain create ripples in the empty flower pot. I had planned to put some tomato plants in this pot, but watching the rain slowly fill it up, day by cloudy day, I started to realize that this emptiness was important to me.

I dress myself with their clothes every week. Five pairs of neatly folded suits to blend me into the lives of the busy. I walk among them, work among them, and converse among them, but my way of life, increasingly rare in this world, is foreign to many of them. The images around them, the voices around them—even the way the world is fed to them—is filled with the desire for accumulation. I wonder if the happiness that they accumulate is just another way of seeking a temporary peace. Like the clouds above, the cycle continues to sustain the lives of many. What would the world look like if there was less? A drop of water lands in the pot. Would a world of less look barren and filled with suffering passively accepted? I stand up.

A single plate, a single bowl, and a single pair of chopsticks sit on the floor next to one worn mat. Rice and stir-fried cabbage await me for dinner. As I enter my kitchen, the steam rising from the cooking rice is comforting. It reminds me of childhood cooking escapes with my ever busy family. I wonder if there can ever be a compromise between emptiness and fullness. Are they truly meant to be at opposing war with each other? Can my way of life exist without the fullness, the goal-orientated, and the ambitious world of movement and materialism? I look at my modern kitchen, with its ventilating hood and its softly humming fridge. Is life truly worse off if their race for more meant I could have more of my peace?

I take the lid off of the pot, and I check inside. Still wet, so I place the lid back on. Outside, the ambulance passes by, roaring down the streets in urgency. A hundred years ago, death would have reached the victim before any such doctor could have arrived. I take out the left over cabbage and position my knife. Each downward motion is sturdy and final, the wooden board beneath sustaining each blow. At the same time, I allow myself to think, and I realize the victim would be fighting off its own body, an ally turned upside down by the years of stress and malnutrition. Chop. Poverty and suffering hide beneath the smiles plastered on screens everywhere. Chop. A never ending cycle for the pursuit of what? Chop. Happiness that can be found anywhere but so often overlooked. Chop. Is it even worth trying to balance such worlds by entangling with the unhappy price of progress? Chop.

The cabbage is ready. I take a single piece of garlic, slicing each piece with awareness, and with some oil, I let the chemistry do its work. I turn on the ventilator, and then turn the pieces around with my spatula. Soon enough, the cabbage is merged with the garlic. My life is not pure emptiness yet it is not pure fullness, so can I ever say that one is better than the other when I question if there even is two parts? I check the rice, and it is done, so I turn the flame off. I give a handful of salt and pepper to the cabbage. The cabbage soon follows.

I pick up my bowl and plate from the living room, and I place the cabbage and rice into their respective homes. I bring them back to the living room, and I see the sun is now beginning to shine. I hear laughter outside as I pick up my chopsticks. The children are playing in the park. The birds are singing with the . With a little

bit of rice and a leaf of cabbage together, I breath in the simple aroma and breath out with emptiness. One world, I muse. What would that look like? Just one.