Granted, this is an arbitrary measure but also a recognition that has enough meaning to just enough people to be celebrated. And so: (SFX – Champagne). Since this is radio, you can’t tell whether this is Dom Perignon. Here’s to Porchlight: Episode #100.
Our theme in this one also involves numbers: ibiz vid Collections.
I contend that it can be a spiritual practice to acquire and maintain the contents of a vast collection. After all, this involves a deep interaction over time between a human being and the material plane. This interaction is intentional, passionate, and driven by genuine curiosity. Chipmunks collect acorns but that’s for their survival. While human collections enhance life, they don’t sustain it. Collections might often contribute to a person’s identity but they don’t define it.
One way that a devotion to building a collection approaches the spiritual is that the purpose it serves and the pleasure it brings often defies description with mere words. Sometimes you encounter a curated display of whatever and be far more impressed with the sheer effort it took to assemble it than its beauty, its rarity, or its estimated value. Appropriately, you might be left speechless. In that case, just ask the collector a question and you’ll be hearing all about it.
So while directing enormous resources to growing and maintaining the non-sentient may not sound like an opportunity for inner growth you’ll generally discover that the passion involved is genuine, the number of different personalities involved to be considerable, and usually there’s at least one good story to be told about the journey taken. And then there’s this: When the mortal life that’s responsible for this singular accomplishment approaches the last chapter – the most profound spiritual conundrum must be faced squarely and in real time, namely; “What happens to all of this when I’m gone, even if they’re able to place a little memento in my casket?”
Powerful question, right? Especially since the only answer is in direct opposition to how the collector and caretaker has acted since that very first discovery:
“What happens to all of this when I’m gone?”
“Well, whether it winds up someplace else or it’s still here with me, I’m not going to care.”