“Be aware of this important principle: every idea and every emotion that pass
through your being are substantive – they are not lost. Whether good or, God forbid, evil, one by one
these impressions are gathered. They
adhere to your psyche, where they evolve into a subtle structure.” - Rabbi
Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, (Daily Work and Principles #5 from Conscious
Community: A Guide to Inner Work,
translated by Andrea Cohen-Kiener, p. 83)
“Look, there’s an open house, let’s take a look!” My husband exclaimed recently as we were
driving home one day. The bigger and the
newer the house, the more appealing it is.
It doesn’t matter how expensive it is, or what color it is. It is just appealing, plain and simple.
Before I became an empty nester, I spent my days driving
from point A to point B back to point A in the town of Lexington, shuttling my
children around and making more trips to the grocery store per week than I care
to admit. But my heart still beats a
little stronger every time I see another one of those prominent bright white
posts with the real estate sign hanging, announcing like a siren an opportunity
to spend lots and lots of money on basically what amounts to a luxurious,
energy consuming money pit. I cannot
deny my instinctive urge to call the number on the sign, or turn into the
driveway to take a peak. Time and time
again, I hear the house calling my name.
Buy me, buy me, buy me. I look luxurious. I have more bedrooms than your current house
does. I have a fancier refrigerator than
your current house does. It doesn’t matter that you already own a house in
which you have already invested a new kitchen and sunroom. Upgrade. Upgrade.
Upgrade.
It troubles me that I have this addictive, unquenchable
attraction to new houses. Am I
territorial? Am I (gasp)
materialistic? Am I an ostentatious
snob? Fortunately, I have a rather
practical side, that reminds me that a bigger house involves more cleaning, and
my distaste of cleaning is greater than my attraction to new houses. My aversion to cleaning is the only reason
why I have not sunken my family into financial chaos by putting down payments
on mansions that I cannot afford.
However, I cannot stop my heart from going atwitter when I drive by a
FOR SALE sign.
Was I always this way?
Surely I wasn’t born this way.
What activities and teachings in my childhood could explain this
unending desire to acquire more real estate?
It came to me the other night as I was watching the All-Star
Baseball game, and a player by the name of Milton Bradley was introduced. I’m sure he is a fine player, and all, but
for those of us who grew up on what my children call, “bored” games, Milton
Bradley was a fixture in the American home.
Oh, the games we would play.
Milles Borne. Sorry. Parcheesi.
Scrabble. Stratego. Yahtzee.
Life. Monopoly. Ahhh, the never-ending game of Monopoly.
Monopoly was my introduction to the real estate world. Who among us can remember the rental rates of
Boardwalk? Atlantic Avenue? Ventnor Avenue? Baltic Avenue? Were you thinking of the colors blue, red,
light blue, and purple? What about the
railroads, and the Get Out of Jail Free cards?
Who among us unwittingly honed our math skills on pastel-colored play
money, in white ones, pink fives, yellow tens, and so on? The generation of the 21st century might be
familiar with Junior Monopoly, a version that can be played before the children
reach the age of computer games, Playstation, Xbox, and Wii. But during my
childhood my family would spend hours upon hours playing monopoly and
scrabble. Those were the days of quality
family time.
Monopoly playing days also taught me to be ruthless, to buy
up properties to prevent others from reaching monopolies. The political message was clear: monopolies are dangerous and meant to be
prevented from others; however, monopolies were extremely lucrative,
advantageous and indeed desirable in order to benefit the personal good. Wow, I learned over and over again to strive
for the monopoly that would permit me to spend money on those cute shiny
plastic green houses that would bring my opponents to their financial
knees. I learned over and over again
that buying real estate is a really really good thing.
It amazes me to this day that I am so affected by the games
that I played as a child. This effect on
my psyche, that I will dub monopoly-itis, helps me understand the meaning of
Rabbi Shapira’s words with regard to the words, “every idea and every emotion
that pass through your being are substantive – they are not lost…. They adhere
to your psyche, where they evolve into a subtle structure.” Rabbi Shapira understood the impact of each
and every emotion, idea, experience, vision, sound, and taste. We are an amalgam of our aggregate
experiences.
Milton Bradley may not have known what the sociological and
psychological implications or their clever “bored” games were, but we can be
sure that armed with this knowledge, we can go forth and conscientiously select
games and activities for our children that will lead to conservation of energy,
peace on earth, and erudition. We’ll
know that we have attained this higher level of consciousness when our
televisions show us an All-Star baseball player named Wii. When that happens, I’ll probably be watching
the game on a larger television in a swankier house.
But I'll still keep my eye out for the neighborhood OPEN
HOUSE.
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