Abundance

I stop here to recount an afternoon on a misty Saturday when, it’s true, New York was getting me down. 

The holiday decorated stores in Williamsburg on a weekend were crowded and loud. The music’s volume up enough enough to paralyze any jitters, subdue even the most restless mind. I can barely stand that many people at such a close distance. At least in subways people are quiet and I just have to focus on not looking at them, but here we have all been activated by decoration, and the impoetus to buy, buy for family, for co-workers, for friends who we want to remind we love, buy for ourselves because we’re in a trance, because we have fallen in love with a sweater. 

The music renders me a zombie. Maybe I’m not the only one. I come up to some tiny necklaces, shoulders hunched, regretting the four books and notebooks I decided to shove into my bag before leaving my apartment, not to mention the two other gifts I bought and already feel shame about. Near tears and in hormonal crisis I say, in a voice louder and more raspy than I mean: “I like this necklace,” almost clawing it down from where it hangs with my edited self control. 

The woman behind the counter has been here too long. She also can’t be older than 22, there is a flightyness in her air, laksadasically noticing that I need help. Or maybe the apathy is not her age, maybe it has to do with a list of other reasons why one would not pay attention to a customer, or a customer like me, who knows. 

A white woman takes pictures of native american style beaded earrings and necklaces that she’s selling and she rushes by with her phone in her hand and a bun in her hair and the long beaded earrings dripping on her shoulder and I feel ill by the urgency and exploitation. The situation has left me unstable, instead of buying the little necklace, I, with some difficulty shake my fingers from the weblike chains and veer into the street. I will be the person waiting outside of stores for friends to finish shopping. I will be the one calling for helping the middle of the changing room saying, “I’ve made a mistake. Get me out of these clothes, I’m not this person, I’m not this person. The music is too loud and I don’t know how to undo the mess I’ve made” (which is buy anything at all, or maybe fear of buying anything at all).

I have issue with being a consumer. I decide to try and find the abundance I am looking for. Being an anxious person, I’m pretty sure it has had to do with diet and exercise, an emptiness that has filled me with a painful meaning identified by lack. But there is also something about abundance that as to do with looking at the sky sometimes and listening to the birds. I write some more things I believe it has and does not have to do with. 

It doesn’t have to do with money. 

It doesn’t have to do with wealth. 

It doesn’t have to do with objects (only a little) 

It has to do with awareness 

The root of the word abundance lies, as so many English words do, in Latin. The word is actually closest in meaning to “overflow”, it is almost a direct line from ‘abundare’ the written and supposed origin. Interesting that abundance would be so closely associated to an action of water. Also, “overflow” implies structure from which to flow over and out of. To feel abundant means that one must identify, and like water, expand to feel all sides of the structure in order to reach escape. 

Abundance is not about objects, it’s not even individual, but there is a power in our bodies like muscles in a fish, awareness through the core. 

Know what you need. 

Identify why you desire it 

Identify perceived limits

Touch those limits

Overflow